She hit the tongue fast, twenty times in a second with her rock and it yanked away, quick as Drake’s whip hand.
Shwoop!
But now the bugs were around her, snapping at her with their creepy froggy tongues and those tongues were fast, fast even by Brianna’s standards.
The bugs had played her. They’d concealed this weapon in their arsenal and she’d gotten cocky.
Speeewt!
Brianna kicked and squirmed, but two of them were on her. She used the rock on the tongue that latched on to her stomach and knocked it loose but it was instantly replaced by three more.
Speeeewt! Speeewt!
They had her! She was held in a web, yelling, cursing, smacking.
Drake was putting himself back together, but his whip hand was still squirming by itself like a snake on hot pavement.
She was pinioned by half a dozen of the tongues and now the rest of the bugs were closing in to chew her up, mandibles slicing the air like scimitars.
Brianna felt a sudden wave of fear. Was it possible she could lose this fight?
“Don’t kill her,” Drake said. “Hold her! She’s mine!”
He was on his feet and searching through the wild melee for his whip arm.
Suddenly, the coyote was in the fight. He leaped for her, jaws open, teeth flashing yellow.
“Really?” she cried.
She shoved back against the greedy muzzle with all her strength. The move stretched one of the lashing tongues taut. The coyote’s powerful jaw, missing Brianna’s arm, clamped hard on the tongue, which snapped back like a cut high-tension cable.
She was pinned, but she still had her speed.
She grabbed the coyote’s ruff and swung it around to clamp on a second tongue.
Now just four tongues still pinned her. She didn’t have the strength to hold on to the coyote. The creature, maybe fearing the bugs would retaliate, took off yelping as if it had been kicked.
Four lines held the Breeze, all more or less on her left side, so she kicked off, pushing straight toward the insects. The tongues slackened. Brianna somersaulted. It was a sketchy maneuver, poorly executed, and she landed hard on her back, but the four tongues had been twisted around and now, as one, they released her.
Even as they released others struck. She could see them flying toward her like striking cobras.
She kicked a bug in the face, kicked hard against a slashing mandible, then boom boom boom, three hard kicks and she was out of there.
She caught her breath on a rise a hundred feet away. Her body was blistered wherever the tongues had touched. But she was alive.
She watched, panting, shaking, as Drake’s tentacle melded seamlessly into his shoulder.
“Come on, Breeze,” Drake taunted. “Come and get me. Here I am!”
Brianna had never been one to ignore a taunt. She had never run from a fight. But she had escaped by inches. By millimeters.
“It’s the end, Breeze,” Drake crowed. “I’m going to kill all of you. Every last one of you!” He danced in a circle, twirling in wild glee. “Run, Breeze! Ruuuuun! Because when I catch you, I’m going to make you suffer!”
Brianna ran.
Leslie-Ann fed her siblings the scrapings from the cans and let them drink the water.
Okay, she told herself: You did all you could.