Page 84 of Wild Child
Ellie tensed behind me.
“What about Steve?” I asked.
“Steve acquired some a few months ago, thanks to Kimball. Now, he'll do anything for it. At least . . ." Neils glanced above us, where he’d appeared like a ghost and jumped off the embankment. "I thought he would."
Ominous thought for Steve, but I had to consider him an unknown still. Kimball? Clearly out of the game. The other guy? Also an unknown, but unlikely to be an issue. If Neils kept talking, I'd keep asking. In the meantime, I had to cobble together some sort of plan that didn't involve a bullet in my chest and this maniac on the loose.
“So you make and sell pixie dust,” I pressed. “For fighters?”
“The creator of the drug only releases small amounts of it at a time,” he murmured. "It's basic supply and demand."
“And that’s you?”
His teeth sparkled when he smiled. “That is me.”
“He’s unhinged,” Ellie murmured, so low I could barely make it out. “He's speaking in the third person. We have to get out of here.”
I squeezed her hand again.
“It's hard to get a hold of,” Neils continued, "and the effects are powerful, so it sells for thousands of dollars per hit. Most people will do anything for more of it.” He frowned, then brightened. “I thought of calling this the Hungry Games, you know, instead of Survival Club."
"This?"
He gestured around us with a wave. "The fight. The cabin. The Hungry Games. Because these people get so hungry for another hit. Sounds less . . . ridiculous."
"People like Steve come to fight . . ."
"And their reward is a hoard of the stuff. So much pixie dust that, with the right skill," Neils shrugged again, as if to saywhat can I do? “one could make a hundred thousand dollars when they sold it. With the 70% kickback to me, I believe I could be a very rich man."
“Is that what you want?” I asked. “Money?”
“Power.”
“It’s the same, isn’t it?”
Neils laughed, but it rang dark and empty. Something I'd expect from a hollowed-out soul. He stepped off his dirt clod and took a step toward us. I sent him a warning glare, and he paused. I attempted to decipher whether or not I had the time to grab the gun and wrestle it from him. He must have seen the calculation in my gaze because he lifted the gun. I stared down the barrel for a full second before I lifted my hands.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said. Panic filled me like smoke.Ellie, I thought. What terrible curse gave her to me minutes before I would lose her?
“Yes.” A stark expression crossed his face. “I do.”
A shot rang out.
* * *
Shrapnel in the muscle felt like hot acid. A busted shoulder felt like crushing despair. I expected a gunshot to the chest to feel like fire.
Instead, there was silence.
I opened my eyes. No bright white light waited. No pain ricocheted through my body. For a full five seconds, I felt nothing but Ellie as she trembled in my arms.
“Dev?” she whispered.
A moment passed before I realized that I hadn’t died, nor had I been shot. In the breath between the barrel staring down my eyes and the sound of a shot, I’d whirled around and covered Ellie with my body.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Yes."
