Pepper wasn’t like Sutter. She was an innocent, small, white bunny rabbit. Sweet. Curious. When she’d needed my attention, she’d scratched my satchel, when she could’ve chosen to bite my hand. She listened, helping me for the entirety of our miserable journey through the temple. I barely recognized who she was now, rising from the well as if some kind of horrible transformation had happened to her.
Her teeth were fangs, and she sported the attitude of a rabid hell creature. Perched on the ledge, she bared her teeth at Helen and Dashell, then me. Dashell and Helen dropped their pursuit of me to dive for the well, clearly concerned about Pepper jumping back into it.
Pepper reared up on her hind legs and spread her jaw wide, displaying rows of sharp, pointed teeth. Then a dark spray shot out from the back of her throat.
An ejection of pepper spray that was so forceful, it was like a fire hydrant had busted, blasting straight at Helen and Dashell. They slammed their eyes shut and backed away, coughing as streams of tears rolled down their cheeks. Their eyes had been wide open when she released it, taking the full brunt of the blinding irritant. Rapidly, the intense smell of black pepper filled the room.
I blinked a few times, my eyes burning and watering, but I had been far enough from the well when it had happened that I wasable to keep going with only the slight discomfort of a burn in my nose and a scratch in my throat.
Helen outstretched her arms, hastily feeling around for Pepper, who evaded her by plunging back into the well. Helen and Dashell coughed and spat, and I was momentarily forgotten as they desperately splashed their eyes in the stream from the waterfall.
“Where are you hiding them?” I asked while I had the advantage, my voice coming out stronger than I’d expected. “Pepper knows Belinda’s here. And I know you’re responsible. Where are they? Where is Leland?”
They splashed their eyes a few moments more. I don’t know why I’d thought she might answer.
“Sub . . . due her,” Helen instructed Dashell around a fit of painful coughs. “Take her out . . . unconscious.”
“Can’t . . . focus,” Dashell coughed.
Helen backhanded her eyelids. “Shoot, then!”
Dashell’s eyes peeled opened to narrow slits, a ghastly red and irritated ring twisting around his pale turquoise irises. He removed a small metal pistol from his coat pocket and aimed, then fired. It wasn’t a bullet. Those weren’t permitted in Everden. But in the split second it flew through the air, I caught enough of a glimpse to understand that, under no circumstances, should I let myself be hit. It was a tranquilizer dart, and I hadn’t come this far to be forced into a deep and paralyzing sleep.
Fortunately, Dashell’s aim was impaired by his vision, and — thanks to Skye — my reflexes were better than they used to be. I dodged, and the dart missed. And when Dashell’s hand disappeared in his coat to load a second dart, I ran.
Only speeding across the slippery wet stone on one good foot was impossible. My body was rigid with coldness. My shoes may as well have been anchors, that’s how sopping wet and heavythey were. My toes were numb, squished, and my socks were drenched and ballooned. I groped for the walls, not looking back, time more precious than ever as I heard their coughing start to lessen.
There was no victory in injuring them. I never intended for anyone to get hurt. Only, in that moment — because I knew Helen wouldn’t listen — the one thought I had was to lure them to the pain-amplifying chamber. There, I could take advantage of what Pepper had already done. I could immobilize them with even more suffering. Once they were trapped in the clutches of their pain, I could run back down and search the well Pepper couldn’t stay away from, where I suspected Belinda was. Hopefully, it hadn’t transformed her too. Hopefully, I could search it without becoming like what had happened to Pepper.
I heard a gun click, and all in one second there was wind, the lanterns stuttered, azipwas right on target, and I knew it was too late for reflexes. I closed my eyes tight, bracing for the impact.
Except I wasn’t hit.
A blood-chilling yowl roared through the room as something mighty landed with a heavy thud and shook the floor.
On instinct, I turned. I let out a shriek of fear as I faced a red-brown mountain lion with golden-brown eyes, stalking forward.
The tranquilizer dart lodged in his heaving side had no effect on him. He prowled closer, his approach focused and predatory, his otherworldly eyes a hypnosis trying to herd me away to his private den.
I backed away from the large animal, whose muscular back heaved with effort as his shoulders rolled. His lithe body moved closer. Closer. Closer.
“Whose Familiar is this?” Dashell said to Helen, his hands moving quickly around the pistol-shaped dart gun to load another tranquilizer. That done, he stopped, waiting to shoot.
The mountain lion bared the full length of his massive canine teeth. I shook with terror. Still, I could not take my eyes off him.
“Shoot him,” Helen screamed over a piercing bombardment of the animal’s catlike screeches. “That’s not a Familiar!” she shouted. “Shoot!”
I felt the mountain lion’s hot breath on my legs a beat before his strong nudge nearly knocked me backward. His long, white whiskers jabbed through my leggings as he nudged again, rougher.
Look at me, he said,I came to protect you.
How I understood his meaning, I didn’t know. There was something in his eyes I knew. A gold collar around his neck.
Ven?
But Ven was supposed to be dead. Jaxan had Severed him.
“Ven?” I croaked, just as a dart slammed into his muscular side, and he hissed.
