But though she coughed and gagged, she couldn’t bring any of the meaty honey-like substance up. It seemed to refuse all attempts to dislodge it.
Oh God, what was she going to do?
“Shad?” she called in a trembling voice, because she was certain that was who the voice she’d heard belonged to. She could feel his protective rage through the partial bond they shared. It flooded her, letting her know he was here to keep her safe and kill anyone or anything that threatened her.
That’s right—Shad’s here. Everything is going to be all right now, a little voice whispered hopefully in the back of her head. He’s going to kill X’izith. In fact, he probably already has.
It must be true—she hadn’t heard the Hive Sovereign’s voice replying to Shad’s threat. Everything was okay now—it was safe to come out.
“Shad?” she asked again in a choking voice, sitting up and lifting her head at last.
“No! Stay down, Harper!” His white eyes were wild with fear. “Don’t—”
Alert to the danger, Harper started to duck her head and hide under the cloak again. But it was too late—a long, strangely jointed limb covered in wiry black hairs had snaked its way around her throat, just above the protective edge of the cloak.
“Put down your weapons,” she heard X’izith’s hissing voice demand in her ear. “Put them down and step back or I rip the female’s pretty little head off.”
Chapter Twenty-four
“No!” Shad’s cry was a sound of anguish, torn from his throat. He saw Harper’s lovely jade green eyes widen in terror, felt her fear rising inside him like a tide of dark water. Seeing her in danger and feeling her panic was overwhelming—suddenly a red curtain of fury seemed to drop over his eyes.
Rage, he thought absently. I’m going into Rage. I didn’t even think that was possible for a Shadow Twin.
Then again, bonding with a female was supposed to be all but impossible too, but he’d managed that, thanks to She Who Alters.
Gods, to think he’d gotten Harper all the way to She Who Alters—almost all the way to the end of the loop—and this was the result.
The Hive still wins, he thought, feeling sick with weariness and fury. No matter what I do, the fucking Hive wins—the past refuses to be changed.
“Shad…” Harper choked out, her fingers fluttering helplessly around her throat.
Her rainbow cloak of thorns was hissing and snapping at the hairy, chitinous arm X’izith had locked around her neck but the Sovereign of the Hive was keeping clear of it. His arm was raised just above the cloak’s attack in a way that lifted Harper’s chin at a painful angle. He was holding her in front of him, using her body like a shield while keeping his own vulnerable abdomen a few inches out of the cloak of thorn’s range.
“Let her go, you fucker,” Shad growled, his voice so deep and angry it was almost unrecognizable even to his own ears. “Let her go or I swear I’ll tear you limb from fucking limb!”
“I think not.” X’izith clicked his mandibles menacingly and tightened his grip on Harper until she let out a gasping squeak. “I have the upper hand here, Kindred, as no one can deny. This female is my right—my Breeding Queen—and none shall take her from me. I will be taking her away with me in a Hive ship and none of you will follow.”
“The Hell you will,” Shad growled harshly, raising his blaster, which boasted far better precision than the flame-torch. “You’ll be dead before you get two feet.”
“Ah, but so will the little female.” One of X'izith’s long antennae swiveled down to caress the side of Harper’s cheek. She gasped and shivered and Shad felt her revulsion and disgust for the huge insect which held her. Harper hated bugs—this must be a nightmare for her!
“Let her go!” he demanded again. “I swear to all the Gods that ever were I’ll shoot your fucking head off!”
“Have you ever heard of a fast-twitch reflex, Kindred?” X'izith’s voice was low, almost purring. “It is a reaction common to my people. It means that if you shoot me, the muscles in the arm I have locked around her neck will twitch in response, ripping off this little female’s head. If you do not wish to see her die right in front of you, you will allow me safe passage away from here.”
“No!” Harper’s voice was a strangled shriek. “No, Shad—shoot him!” she begged, her eyes bright with tears. “I’d rather die than go through what he has planned for me. Shoot him!”
Shad felt like a cruel fist was squeezing his heart to pulp in his chest. He couldn’t let Harper be taken but if he took the shot he was aiming for, she would die before his eyes. Now he knew what his brother War had felt like when he’d been forced to kill Ziza. It was more grief and guilt and horror than any warrior should have to bear, and yet, this was the choice he had to make. But between killing Harper and letting X’izith have his way with her, there was really no choice.
His finger tightened on the trigger.
“Stop, son of my kin!” A strong, familiar voice exploded inside his skull. Cutting his eyes to the right, he saw Baird standing, also with his blaster drawn. He wasn’t looking at Shad—like every other warrior in the room, his gaze was trained on X’izith and Harper. But there was a silver wire around his temples that Shad recognized—a think-me. His uncle was using it to bespeak him.
“Don’t speak aloud and whatever the fuck you do, don’t shoot,” Baird’s strong mental voice continued. “Just answer me one thing—how strong is that cloak of hers? Varin thinks he has a shot—first at the arm joint to nullify the twitch reflex and then in the back. He’s packing a plasma rifle with ten times the potency of a blaster. Can Harper’s cloak withstand it if the blast goes through that Hive fucker’s thorax and comes out against her back?”
A little of the desperate red Rage seeped out of Shad’s vision as he tried to concentrate…tried to think. Could the cloak of thorns withstand so much? He remembered the merchant in the Thieves' Market bragging that it could. He’d said the cloak would be as strong as plasti-steel armor and that it would protect Harper from any kind of attack. But was it true?
From the corner of his eye, he saw Varin moving stealthily around the perimeter of the room. He was on X’izith’s blind side, out of range of his one remaining compound eye. In his hands was what looked like a blaster with an impossibly long silver barrel.
Shad took a deep breath. The plasma rifle—that was what the Vision Kindred held. Its beam was so destructive that many planets had banned the weapon outright.
“Should he take the shot? Just nod your head if he should,” Baird’s voice said in his brain.
For a moment, Shad froze. Was the Vision Kindred really a good enough shot to sever the arm joint before X’izith could rip Harper’s head off? Baird had assured him the warrior was a deadly marksman but could anyone be that good? Was Shad about to see the woman he loved killed in front of his eyes?
He looked into her face and saw terror…and felt her determination. Harper really would rather die than go with the Sovereign of the Hive and Shad didn’t blame her a bit. It was a chance they had to take.
Without looking at Baird, he nodded his head once, very slightly.
Chapter Twenty-five
Harper felt like she was choking—like she couldn’t get enough air. The hairy insect arm around her neck was horribly strong and the scent of rotten meat hung heavily around the Sovereign—a noxious cloud that made her want to gag. She fought the impulse grimly—X'izith’s arm around her neck narrowed her airway so much she could barely breathe. She was certain if she started throwing up right now she would choke to death.
Not that choking to death might not be preferable to the alternative.
She saw Shad’s finger tighten on the trigger of the silver weapon he held and wondered if this was the end—wondered how much it would hurt to have her head torn off.
Please just let it be over quickly, she prayed. Please don’t let it hurt too much! Please—
And then everything happened at once.
There was a
flash of light by her right eye—almost a silent explosion. The arm at her neck jerked and Harper was sure this was it—she was going to die.
But instead of pulling her head off, the hairy insect arm somehow jerked itself free of X’izith’s body. It fell away from her neck and lay twitching at her feet on the table-like surface of what he’d called the “Breeding Platform.”
The Sovereign’s surprised shriek of pain and anger was just beginning when another flash of light—this one lower—lit the dim room. Suddenly, it was as if a huge, powerful hand pushed Harper forward, away from the screeching, flailing insect.
She stumbled and fell off the rocking platform, expecting to face-plant on the hard stone floor below.
Instead, strong arms caught her and Shad was holding her tight.
“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he murmured, his voice low and rough with emotion. “Everything is going to be all right now, Kallana. I’ve got you—everything is going to be all right.”
“Oh Shad!” His name was torn from her throat in a sob and she clung to him, pressing her face to his neck, not wanting to see what was happening behind her. The screaming, scrabbling wounded dance of the Sovereign as he jerked and swayed and died. Please, God, let him just die.
Then she realized something was missing.
“My cloak!” Her head jerked up as she realized she was no longer wearing it. Had the strange, silent explosion she’d seen from the corner of her eye—the one that had somehow pushed her off the breeding platform—hurt it? “Is it okay?” she demanded, turning her head to try and find it.
“I’d say it’s just fine,” Shad said dryly. “Looks like the same can’t be said for its prey though.”
“It’s prey?” Harper forced herself to look at the breeding platform again. Sovereign X'izith was still there—on his back now, dying like a stepped on roach.
The biggest roach in the world, Harper thought and shuttered convulsively in utter revulsion. She’d always hated bugs and living in Florida meant she saw a lot more of them than she wanted to. But the Sovereign of the Hive put even the biggest palmetto bug to shame. Watching him die was truly horrifying.
There was a hole in the Hive leader’s abdomen and his breeding barb had twisted upward and was dripping burning green ichor from its bent tip down into the exposed cavity. Smoke was rising from the ruined flesh as he burned himself with his own acid-like essence. This had to be excruciatingly painful but it wasn’t his only problem, Harper saw.
Her rainbow cloak had finally let go of her…and attached itself to X'izith’s head instead. It had a hole in it too, Harper saw—or rather, a threadbare spot where its fabric looked as thin as cobwebs—but that didn’t seem to have affected its energy level at all. Its many spines and quills had formed into claws and a ravenous looking mouth with jagged rainbow teeth. Currently it was doing its best to tear the Sovereign’s face off.
“Oh God,” she whispered, burying her face in Shad’s neck again. “Oh God, I don’t want to see!”
“You don’t have to, baby. Don’t look,” he urged, nuzzling the top of her head comfortingly with his chin. “Just don’t look—everything here is almost over. Baird and the rest of the warriors are going to wipe out the rest of the Hive—the few who are left. These fuckers will never bother us again.”
“Never again,” Harper whispered, nuzzling closer to lay her head on his broad shoulder. “We won, Shad—we changed history. We really, finally w—”
She stopped in mid-sentence because somehow, instead of pressing against him, her face seemed to almost press into the hard flesh of his shoulder. And the flesh wasn’t hard anymore—it seemed to give, almost like marshmallow.
Harper’s tightly shut eyes sprang open. For a moment, she swore she could see right through Shad’s body to the rough red stone walls beyond. What the Hell was going on?
“Shad?” She jerked her head up, looking at him with worried, wide eyes. “Shad, what—”
A rising shriek cut her off and they turned simultaneously to see that the cloak of thorns had nearly finished the job. X’izith’s mandibles had punched through the threadbare cloth in one part but the cloak had taken his one remaining eye—when the cloth rose for a moment the oozing socket was clear to see. And then it lowered again as, with a final, convulsive move, it severed the shrieking Sovereign’s head from his neck.
The huge insect body twitched spasmodically, its clawed appendages punching the air in jerks and kicks even as the shrieking cry cut off abruptly. Black ichor drooled from the stump of its neck and puddled on the breeding platform below it.
And then finally, it was over. X’izith, Sovereign for centuries, servant of the Nameless Ones, and Ruler of the Hive was finally and irrefutably dead.
Harper knew she should feel relief but all she could feel was disgust and nausea.
“Ugh!” she moaned against Shad’s neck, forgetting the strange momentary illusion she’d had that he was somehow see-through. “Think I’m going to be sick!”
Actually, it would be a good thing if she could throw up—she needed to get the sweet, meaty stuff they’d pumped down her throat out of her system. God, she’d almost forgotten about that! She needed to tell Shad—needed to get an antidote to it, whatever it had been.
“Shad,” she began. “Before you came in one of the, uh, worker bugs reached me and made me drink this awful stuff. It tasted like honey and blood and rotten meat and—”
“Blood Honey.” The low, growling voice belonged to a Kindred with dark hair and pale copper eyes.
“Varin!” Shad nodded gravely at the other warrior. “You have my undying thanks for saving my female’s life. Your aim was true.”
“Just finishing a job I started some time ago,” the other male said. “But did I hear your female say she had been fed the Blood Honey by one of X’izith’s workers?”
Harper frowned. “I…think that was what he called it. They shoved a slimy tube down my throat and…” She shivered and couldn’t go on.
Varin nodded grimly. “The same thing happened to my Brynn.”
“Is Brynn your wife?” Harper asked quickly. “Is she all right? Did they have to pump her stomach to get it out? I mean, it’s poison—right?”
“Of a kind but it won’t kill you,” was Varin’s not-very-reassuring reply. “Listen, we have to finish mopping up the last stragglers,” he told Shad. “Bring your female to the med station when we get back to the Mother Ship. Commander Sylvan will want to look her over for injuries. I’ll talk to you then. Here,” he added. “I’m not sure if you want it back or not but…”
He let his sentence trail off as he held out the rainbow cloak of thorns to her. It had a huge hole in it and was so weak it could barely hiss at the Kindred as he held it.
“Oh, no!” Harper took the cloak gently and cradled it like a baby. “Oh you poor thing!” she whispered as she felt its rainbow quills caress her fingers weakly. “I’m so sorry!” Her tears fell on the cloak. It trembled in her arms for a moment longer and then was still.
Harper looked up at Shad who was watching gravely. “I…I think it's dead,” she whispered and started crying again, weeping not only for the cloak but for the awful ordeal she’d just been through as the stress and fear finally started to leak away. “It’s dead, Shad—it’s gone.”
“It gave its life to save you,” he said gently. “We will never forget its love and loyalty to you.”
“Truly it was a worthy and valiant protector,” Varin rumbled. He bowed his head for a moment in respectful silence, then looked up. “Forgive me but I must go now. I’ll see you both in the med station back on the Mother Ship.”
He left before Harper could ask any more questions but it didn’t matter—she was too upset about her cloak to think any more of the awful Blood Honey and its possible side effects.
But as she clutched the cloak to her chest, she had a worried feeling, somehow—a feeling that bad things weren’t done happening yet. That even though the past had been changed and
the Hive had been vanquished, something still wasn’t quite right…
Chapter Twenty-six
On the way back in Baird’s ship with Harper riding on his lap, Shad had another episode of fading—just as he had when he’d first caught her in the Hive’s lair. This time there was no dying cloak to distract Harper—she demanded to know what was going on.
“Shad, what the hell?” she exclaimed, staring at him as he finally re-solidified. It seemed to take longer this time than it had during previous incidents.
Shad didn’t know what to say. Harper was wrapped in a spare uniform shirt Baird had given him to cover her, since the remains of the green-fringed dress hid next to nothing, and she had stopped crying about the rainbow cloak, which was folded neatly in her lap. But her jade green eyes were red-rimmed and he could tell she was still upset. For that reason he was reluctant to tell her what was going on.
That and the fact that speaking it out loud would somehow make it true.
“Is there a problem?” he asked, trying to make his voice even and reasonable.
“You’re goddamned right there’s a problem!” Harper exclaimed. “I almost sank right through your lap just now and for a minute I could swear I saw the seat right through your head. It was like you were…melting away for a minute. What’s going on?”
Baird, who had been piloting the ship in silence, his hands clamped to the steering yoke, shot Shad a quizzical glance.
“I noticed the, uh, see-through thing on the way over to Mars,” he remarked, frowning. “Care to share, son of my Brothers?”
Shad sighed. There was no getting around it and no pretending it wasn’t happening. Part of him had hoped that the fading would stop once the Hive was defeated but apparently the future’s hold on him had nothing to do with what happened in the past.
“Sylvan thinks it’s the future—which is my present—dragging me back,” he admitted reluctantly. “I don’t belong in this time because I’m already here—my younger self is, anyway. I’m sorry, Kallana,” he murmured, seeing Harper’s stricken face. “I’m so damn sorry.”
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