The vehicle righted itself and darted down the alley, gaining speed rapidly. Drakkal dropped a hand to the throttle and tugged it back, but the speed kept increasing, and the alley only narrowed, causing the vehicle to bounce and jitter as its energy shield struck the walls. It wouldn’t hold out long at this rate.
“Oh God,” Shay said, voice trembling.
Drakkal glanced back to see her half out of her harness andleaning over Leah, enveloping the cub with her body like a living shield.
The hovercar dropped five meters in an instant, making Drakkal’s stomach lurch. Before he could recover, it dropped again, and again, and the ground was suddenly much too close. The vehicle’s nose pitched down.
Drakkal turned toward Shay and Leah, driven only by his instinct to protect them with his own body.
The hovercar hit the ground with a slam that jolted through Drakkal from head to toe and made his teeth crack together. The vehicle bounced up; when it came down again, the shield had failed. The hovercar’s metal underside hit the ground with a deafening crash, thrashing the vehicle’s occupants violently. Drakkal’s head struck something—he couldn’t tell whether it was the window, the dashboard, or something else in the chaos—and his world became a blur of flashing red alarm lights, screaming metal, and cries from his cub.
When the hovercar finally slid to a halt, it took Drakkal several seconds to blink his vision clear. His body ached vaguely, but that ache permeated him, and his head felt both too light and too heavy. He twisted slowly to look into the back seat as he fumbled to release his harness; the latches refused to come undone.
Shay was slumped to the side, her forehead leaned against the cracked backdoor window.
Drakkal’s hands froze for an instant. “Shay?” When she didn’t respond, cold, slithering dread gathered in his gut. “Shay!”
Shay groaned and slowly sat up, leaving a smeared streak of red on the window. Blood oozed from a gash on her forehead. Furrowing her brow, she reached toward the wailing cub beside her. Her eyes were concerned despite her wound. Relief eased some of Drakkal’s fear.
As much as he hated the terror in Leah’s desperate cries, as much as he hated to see her face so red, it was heartening in a way—she was well enough to scream. That wassomething.
A bright light came on somewhere in front of the hovercar. Drakkal turned toward it, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. A dark figure seemed to materialize from the light, clad in black from top to bottom, and sauntered toward the vehicle.
Drakkal knew that walk. He knew the sway of those hips, knew the self-importance in that stride. He knew their assailant despite the helmet obscuring her face.
Vanya stopped at the front passenger side window and lifted a bulky, gun-shaped device to the glass. When she flipped a switch on the side, a spike punched through the window, creating fractures all around the point of entry.
Drakkal wrestled his seat harness, but it still wouldn’t come undone. He growled and formed the hardlight claws on his left hand. There was a hiss from Vanya’s device. Drakkal glanced at it to see thick, white gas swiftly flowing into the cab.
“Drak? What’s going on?” Shay asked, the pitch of her voice rising with every word.
He glanced back to see her struggling to free herself from her remaining shoulder strap. The concern on her face deepened as awareness lit in her eyes. Leah continued to scream, taking in shallow, shuddering breaths.
“Cover your mouth,kiraia.” Drakkal sliced away the strap over his right arm and shifted forward, pulling on the remaining strap. The gas, pungent and bitter, filled his nostrils as he drew in breath, making his head swim. He coughed and bent his left arm, hooking his fingers beneath the strap. The hardlight claws sliced into his skin as he tore the strap; he barely felt the pain.
Behind him, Leah’s cries had given way to a coughing fit, and Shay was coughing along with her. Finallyfree of the harness, Drakkal tugged on the door handle, but the door wouldn’t open—it was stuck against the alley wall. He gritted his teeth against the aches in his body and swung his left fist at the windshield. It struck with a heavy blow, but only a small chip appeared in the glass. The gas, which had made the air in the vehicle hazy, stung his eyes, making them water and further obscuring his vision.
“She stopped crying,” Shay said between coughs; Leah had gone silent. “Oh my God…Drak. She…she stopped—” By the time she, too, fell silent, her words had been heavily slurred.
Drakkal twisted to look back again. A sudden wave of dizziness threatened to overtake him, but he forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to see. Shay was slumped over, one arm stretched out with her hand on Leah’s belly. The baby’s head was tipped to the side, eyes closed. Neither were moving.
“Shay!” he roared as a wave of panic, protectiveness, rage, and terror blasted through him. Instinct overtook conscious thought, leaving only a simple list of issues to address—air, Vanya, family.
He turned back to the windshield and struck it again, this time leading with his hardlight claws. The hardlight pierced the blaster-proof glass; he swung his arm aside, opening long cuts across the center of the windshield. When he drew his hand back and struck the glass again, it exploded outward.
Drakkal’s head spun. His vision cleared for an instant before blurring again. He grabbed a hold of whatever was in front of him and hauled himself out of the cab, ignoring the chunks of hard glass on the hood beneath him as he emerged. The white haze wafted out around him and began to disperse, caught on a barely perceptible air current in the alley.
Shaking his head sharply, he struggled to get his feet beneath him and turn toward the second item on his list—Vanya. She was still standing beside the hovercar, hands nolonger on the device she’d planted in the window, her hidden face turned toward him.
“You always were stubborn,” she said. The speaker on her helmet made her sound digitized.
Drakkal roared. Rage flowed up from his chest and clawed its way out of his throat, and his hazy vision took on a crimson tint again. He dropped his left hand to the mangled hood of the hovercar, buried his claws in it, and used it to launch himself at Vanya.
She dodged him, and Drakkal slammed into the alley wall. He faintly registered pain on his face, head, and shoulder as he crashed to the ground, but he shrugged it off and grabbed the side of the car to haul himself up again. He shook his head sharply, but it was like the gas had gathered in his brain to blanket his every thought in a fog.
“Ireallywanted things to go different this time, Drakkal,” Vanya said with enough acid in her voice to melt bone, “but you let thisji’tasget in the way.”
His legs wobbled, unwilling to support him for much longer. He lunged toward Vanya anyway. Drakkal’s claws slashed through the air as he pushed himself forward, and Vanya danced backward. He poured all his remaining strength into his every swing, but each time he swung, she seemed to be a second ahead of him.