short knives strapped to her thigh but Nigel caught it in midair.
“Some friends you’ve made, Chosen One,” he said with a grin.
“Don’t call me that,” I growled.
“We’re chosen,” Jazmine said, squirming as Thomas put her in a chokehold. “Protected.”
“No, you aren’t,” Thomas said. “Not any more. Not way out here.”
“There’s nobody else to protect you now,” Nigel leered. The deep red gouges across his cheek had already started healing, though bloody bandages still covered one eye.
“It’s just you, and me. Let’s finish what we started earlier.”
My muscles strained against his grip as his arms wrapped around me, squeezing the air out of my lungs. I gasped for breath, my head felt dizzy from lack of oxygen.
The bracelet on my wrist let out a soft beeping alarm. After all of today’s excitement, I’d burned through the elixir I’d had earlier and was running on empty.
“Looks like you’re out of juice,” Nigel said. “I’m halfway tempted to give you more, just so we can keep things fair. I’ve been waiting for this a long time,” he whispered, his cold lips trailing the nape of my neck. “It seems somehow anticlimatic. You’re so weak, it’s disgusting.”
I shivered, kicking hard against his shin, but it was no use. I flinched as his teeth grazed my skin. Then I felt them sink into my flesh. I felt his muscles flex, getting stronger as he drained the life from me, my blood staining his lips and filling his veins.
He paused, taking a deep, satisfied breath. Crimson blood ran down his pale chin, turning my stomach.
“Interesting,” he said, licking his lips like an animal. “More flavor than I would have guessed, from someone as ordinary as you.”
“Stop it,” a shaky voice said. April stood in front of us, looking small and weak, holding a vial and a syringe.
“Or what?” Bryce asked.
“Or we’ll kill you,” April said.
She waited until the elite had finished laughing, before holding up the syringe.
“We’ve created an antidote to the elixir. It will make you human again. Weak, mortal. Just like us.”
Bryce and Thomas exchanged glances.
“There’s no such thing,” Nigel said.
“It’s true,” I said, backing April’s bluff. “You must have heard of Quandom, of what happened there. What the king did to them. But do you know why? A man named John Patten stole research from the citadel. He engineered a cure.”
I wasn’t sure how much of this was news, but Nigel’s pupils widened in recognition. He must have heard some of it before, enough to worry him.
“Let her go. Now,” April said, taking a step forward, the syringe clenched in her shaking fist.
“Step any closer to me and I’ll snap her neck,” Nigel growled. “You should know better than to try and take a bone away from a dog.”
“What an exotic morsel you are,” Bryce added. “I might have you for dessert after I’ve finished with this one.”
“Let’s just kill her and be done with it,” Thomas said. Nigel nodded at him, and Thomas let Jazmine go and moved towards April. She screamed and stumbled backwards. Jazmine, now that her hands were free, pulled another dagger from the sheath on her thigh and flung it at him, striking him deep in the shoulder.
Then she spun and slashed at Bryce’s arm, cutting it deep to the bone. Camina bowed her head and slurped a mouthful of his elite blood, then flung her head back, cracking his nose. She broke his grasp and elbowed him hard in the ribs. He stumbled back, surprised, but then backhanded her so hard she went tumbling.
A ferocious snarl tore through the air as a dark blur leapt at him from behind, smashing him into a container truck hard enough to dent the metal. He cringed away from the large, shaggy slagpaw as another figure emerged through the ash.
“Hey boys,” Penelope said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. She looked like hell, after weeks in a cell, but I could tell the elite recognized her.
“You’re dead,” Nigel said, a tremor of anxiety in his voice. “I watched you die.”
“Death is more of a concept,” she said. “Seems it didn’t really agree with me.”
Bryce got up and rushed at her, but she was fast. Maybe not as strong as he was, but she’d been chosen, and a champion. Even though she was newly elite, she knew how to defend herself, and the deep wound on Bryce’s arm slowed him down.
Jazmine and Camina were fighting Thomas, which left Nigel to Trevor and me. The slagpaw growled, stalking forward, saliva dripping from its