His enormous body suddenly shuddered. The hands choking me relaxed, allowing me to twist my neck free from his grip.
With gurgling noises coming from his mouth, he collapsed at my feet, thrashing in convulsions.
The dimo’s tongue had quickly swollen to the size of my forearm, completely blocking his mouth. A pair of his hands clawed at his throat as he struggled for air, the other pair scratching at his chest.
“What did you do?” the kreer yelled from the entrance.
He was followed by a group of others. Crux might have sent them to make sure the dimo complied with his order of locking me up.
“Get her! Now!”
All of them rushed me.
Jumping over the dimo’s writhing body, I dashed back to the waste sorting room—there was nowhere else to run.
Swiping my gun off the floor, I shot at the two males who came the closest.
Spinning on my heel, I climbed up the garbage pile, back to the chute. The belt inside moved down when I needed to go up. I’d have to climb up the walls inside the tunnel, careful to stay off the belt. It wouldn’t be easy, but I had no other choice.
“Get her!” Someone shouted drunkenly behind me. My stomach dropped with dread. My heart beat so fast, it was hard to breathe.
More of them rushed in.
Frantically, I scrambled into the tunnel. Bracing my boots and my arms against the wall, I climbed up.
Screams and growls reverberated through the room behind me. Then, the sounds of clawing and slamming at the wall began.
Someone must have yanked at the belt with enough force to rip it because it slackened then started moving much faster. The males were pulling it out of the tunnel, probably hoping to get me out this way. They would succeed at that, too, if my arms or feet slipped, and I fell onto the belt.
I clung harder to the walls, afraid to think about what would happen if I fell. The shoulder that the centipede had mauled ached. The mandibles of the creature hadn’t been able to pierce through the reinforced material of my suit, but it still hurt.
Something wrapped around my thigh—one of the long, segmented tails of a kreer. My heart leaped into my throat. Shoving the loose belt aside, I propped my hand on the floor of the tunnel, then used the other hand to get the knife out of the sheath on my belt.
“Get off me,” I hissed through my teeth, slicing the tail off my thigh.
A screeching sound of pain came from outside of the tunnel as the tail limply fell away from me. Clenching the knife between my teeth, I kept moving up the tunnel, eager to get out of reach of all their tails, feelers, tentacles, and other appendages.
My arms and legs shook uncontrollably when I finally came upon the loose piece of paneling in the wall, up the corridor from my old room. There was no way I could make it all the way to the garden by crawling up the tunnel like this. Making sure there was no one around, I climbed out into the corridor, instead.
Like a woman possessed, I ran back to the gardens, and from there, to the small room behind the library.
Chapter 22
MY HEART POUNDED HARD when I made it back to the room. Disappointment, worry, and fear filled me at finding it empty.
Vrateus wasn’t there.
From the few words exchanged between Crux and the others, I understood that Vrateus had been captured and escaped. The question remained—had he kept his freedom or had he been re-captured?
Part of me wished I’d immediately run back out there in search of him. The other part held me back out of caution. I was much more useful to Vrateus free and alive, than captured and potentially dead or used as a pawn by his enemies.
Pacing the tiny space, I listened to every small noise while trying to decide what to do next.
A screeching noise outside the wall shared with the library startled me. Sparks flew, and a line formed in the paneling, with melting plastic dripping on each side. Someone was cutting through the wall from the outside.
I darted for the tunnel to hide.
“Svetlana.” Vrateus kicked in the piece of the wall he had just cut out.
“You!” Relief spread through me, making me weak in the knees.
He tossed the cutting tool aside and shoved a shelf in the library over, to cover the opening he’d just made.