Total pages in book: 159
Estimated words: 149470 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149470 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 747(@200wpm)___ 598(@250wpm)___ 498(@300wpm)
Meanwhile Clarissa suddenly seemed to wake up. All this time, she had been standing there, watching the duel with an empty expression on her face. If anyone had asked me, I would have said there was something wrong with her—“the lights are on but nobody’s home,” as the expression goes. But now, at a look from her Master and that little red dart that seemed to hit her right between the eyes, she suddenly sprang into action.
With an unholy shriek that scared the crap out of everyone in the room, she rushed forward at Sir. As she ran, I saw a flash of silver in her hands as she lifted both of them above her head. Too late, I realized she had drawn the ornamental dagger I had seen on the gravity belt she wore around her waist.
Oh my God, I thought. Oh my God, she’s not going to—
But before I could properly grasp what was happening, Clarissa had leapt high in the air like a gymnast. As she came down, she buried the dagger in the left side of Sir’s chest—stabbing him right through the heart!
With a sense of slow-motion horror, I saw him stagger and fall to his knees. The blue rope of Mental Power he’d had wrapped around Gra’multh fizzled and then went out as Sir fell over, onto his back.
“Sir! I gasped. “Oh, no! Sir!”
Not knowing what I was going to do, I rushed forward. I saw Clarissa was bending over him, about to pull out the long silver knife and stab him again. Suddenly my pain and confusion turned to righteous wrath.
“No, you don’t, you bitch!” I shouted at her and bowled into her, knocking her away from Sir’s supine body.
Suddenly, we were in a scratching, biting, screaming fight like I hadn’t been in since that time in Elementary school when Amanda Sebring stole my favorite pencil and then wouldn’t give it back. I was grabbing handfuls of Clarissa’s long, silky hair and yanking for all I was worth and she was biting and snapping at my neck and shoulder, apparently trying to take a chunk out of me with her sharp white teeth.
“Watch them!” I heard one of the guards shout. “The stairs! The hundred stairs!”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw that he was right—somehow Clarissa and I had rolled right over to the edge of the steep golden steps the led up to the top of the pyramid. And if we weren’t damn, careful, we were going to go over.
Well, I’m not going over! I thought, with renewed determination. I needed to find a better handhold—Clarissa was fighting with a kind of mindless fury that made me think something or someone else was controlling her. She was like a wild animal and if I didn’t end this fight soon, I was going to lose it and we were both going to fall over the edge.
Somehow, my hand happened to land on her gravity belt. I don’t know if someone guided me or if it was blind, dumb luck. But the minute I felt it under my fingertips, I knew what to do.
I stopped trying to keep her from biting me and just concentrated on the damn belt. Clenching my jaw, I fought past the pain and forced myself to ignore the sharp teeth digging into my shoulder. And then, just as her teeth drew blood, the golden belt came loose, and I pulled it off her. At the same moment, I kicked out with both legs, catching her in the midsection and sending her towards the edge of the steep, golden stairs.
Her teeth came loose from my arm—thank goodness or she would have taken me with her—and her long, skinny body seemed to crumple as the weight of Korrigon Four’s immense gravity squeezed and crumpled her like I might crumple an empty diet Coke can in my fist.
Then she went flying over the edge of the stairs and I heard her tumbling all the way down—thump, thump, thump, thump, thump…
Oh my God, did I kill her? I think I killed her! were the thoughts that flew through my head. But then I remembered the reason I’d been fighting the other human pet in the first place. Sir! Was he dead?
Feeling shaky, I got to my hands and knees and crawled over to him. He was still lying there on the golden floor, his eyes closed and the jeweled hilt of the dagger sticking out of the left side of his chest. And nobody was lifting a finger to help him!
“Oh, no! No, no, no, no!” I heard myself gasping as I gathered his head into my lap. He didn’t move or respond to my touch and I felt my heart clench in my chest. I looked around and saw that a bunch of the guards were just standing there like they didn’t know what to do.