by Dianna Love
The little bird animal landed on a branch and turned to keep an eye on me as if I presented the real threat.
I let out a pained breath and relaxed my guard. The minute I did, I noticed every curved muscle, and other parts, draped over me. A distinct masculine scent tangled up my next breath.
The heat I felt building inside this time had nothing to do with preparing to fight a battle.
He pushed up on his arms, sharp breaths squeezing out between clenched jaws. I could swear embarrassment skittered across his face before his eyes hardened and he snapped, “Have you no brain?”
“Evidently not, because I try to save you from being attacked and end up catching the devil for it.”
The surprise on his face was comical. “Save me? From a dallymoth?”
“Moth? Aren’t those like butterflies? That thing’s no moth. I saw teeth and claws.”
He growled another dark word I didn’t catch. “Teeth for eating insects with hard shells and claws for grabbing branches as it flies around spinning thread...which we use for weaving. You frightened it so badly I bet the thing doesn’t make a strand of thread to harvest for another week. Do you have to kill everything that helps us survive?”
My face heated so fast I had to be glowing red with humiliation. I shot back at him, “I only meant to protect you. Wasted energy on my part.”
My answer must have stalled his brain because he stared at me slack-jawed.
I’d have laughed at his expression if I could find one thing funny about this situation. “Get off me.”
Now he looked embarrassed. Good.
He shoved up to his feet, stood there a minute debating something, then offered his hand.
I slapped it away and struggled to a standing position. “How am I to know what’s dangerous or not in this place? You got a book or a list of things not to kill?”
Callan had no answer to that. He just stared at me for several long seconds then lifted the spear and turned back to whatever trail he followed.
“Is there a problem?” Zilya called out, coming back to us, her eyes a deep purple with intensity.
I watched Callan’s face for a sign of how he’d explain this. Depending on the way he answered, I could end up with my wrists bound again...or worse.
He waved off Zilya. “A dallymoth frightened her.”
Etoi roared with laughter. “Our youngest children don’t fear dallymoths.”
I narrowed my eyes at Callan who ignored me, his don’t-cross-me mask back in place. By the time I’d dusted myself off, Zilya and Etoi were waiting for us.
Etoi kept a sly eye on Callan, whose curt voice made it clear he blamed me for this delay, which improved her mood significantly. Especially when Callan stepped over to me and dropped his voice to a menacing level. “The sky is changing faster. Hold us up again and I’ll leave you staked until we return.”
I held up my hands. “Just a mistake.”
“Don’t make one when we reach the transender,” he warned. “If you cause us to lose a child, I’ll kill you myself and leave what’s left for the croggle.”
Just when I thought we might have reached a friendly understanding, but no. “I won’t let anything hurt a child.”
Whether Callan believed me or not was yet to be seen, but I saw something in his gaze that hinted at a change in spite of his cold voice.
That he might truly believe I’d tried to protect him.
If so, that had to fly in the face of my being a tek-nah-tee. Didn’t it? But it probably also rubbed for any girl to protect a warrior such as Callan.
What had he said? That he would not be tricked by his enemy again. In that case, I might be reading more into his reactions than was there.
This time, Callan set a faster pace.
I jogged in step behind him, waiting for Etoi and Zilya to pull ahead once more as they had last time. Over roots, around trees growing thicker, beneath leaves everywhere. Easy to get lost in a matter of minutes.
When Callan gave a hand signal with two fingers, Zilya split off to the left with Etoi. Callan spoke over his shoulder to me in a whisper. “Follow me. Do not make noise.”
“What’s happening?”
“Don’t make noise means to keep your mouth closed.”
I mimicked him silently behind his back at his snippy tone and whispered, “I can’t help you unless I understand what’s going on.”
He looked up at the changing sky for answers to his silent questions and hissed.
I started to ask what now, but saw the green stripes whipping across the sky like giant brush strokes.
Callan started running. “The sky’s changing faster than before.”
“What does that mean?” I jumped over downed trees, chasing after him. “Why’d you split up from the others?”
He answered in a low voice sharp with impatience. “The sky stripes when the transender arrives to deliver children and sometimes scouts. Our teams divide as we approach...” He must have decided I really was confused, because he kept explaining. “That way, if one team is penned in by a croggle or a different threat, the other team can help the child. We may be too late.”
“What if—”
“Shhh,” he snarled. “When a child is delivered, Zilya and Etoi will distract the threat. I’ll hand off the child to you to protect then I’ll draw the croggle away so they can escape. Each team knows their duty. No arguments.”
That sounded like Callan had to be the last one to escape the croggle. Wouldn’t that be harder to do alone? When the forest started to open up ahead, Callan stopped abruptly and dropped into a crouch behind paper-thin bushes that barely hid anything. I dropped into a crouch beside him.
I studied the quiet area, thinking this might be the wrong place when I heard his sudden growl of anger.
Something was up.
Searching further to my left, I spied Zilya and Etoi hunkered down, too.
I could feel the double beat of my heart racing as I inhaled the acrid scent of the blood-colored earth. Sweat ran down my face and dripped into my eyes, blinding me.
I leaned my mouth near Callan’s ear, noting how he forced himself to remain still when he obviously was bothered by me being so close. Could I use that to my advantage at some point?
I asked, “What’s the problem?”
“Tek-nah-tee scouts.”
Lifting up, inch-by-inch, I braced myself on my arms and managed to see through a gap in the intense orange-and-black leaves. An area that looked similar to the same grassy field where I’d fought the croggle monster earlier fanned out before us. The trampled rubbery grass here had gray-blue bloodstains darkening the ground.
But there was no dead monster carcass. Was this the right field?
So what happened to the croggle? Or were those bloodstains from something else?
A sudden movement to the left snagged my attention.
No monster, but two people. The tek-nah-tee scouts? Both males in their early twenties, each holding the arm of a little boy, a toddler, no older than three or four, with bright red hair and horror etched in his tear-streaked face.
The two guys wore shiny, metallic gray one-piece clothing that covered them from neck to boots. The way they carried themselves, their demeanor reminded me of the people in uniforms who’d arrested me near the Sandia Mountains this morning. That seemed forever ago and these two scouts were far more lethal looking than the elders who’d carted me to the Institute. Dark, short-cropped hair gave these two young men an aggressive and harsh appearance. Unmerciful.
And they both had menacing designs painted–inked?–in black on their exposed forearms. Tattoos.
So those were tek-nah-tees, huh?
Now I understood why Mathias thought Tony was one since he had that same short hair with an arrogant cut to his chin, a scorpion tattoo and he strutted with attitude the way those two moved.
One scout clutched a metal instrument. A flint-gray box that fit in the hand he raised and pointed at the child.
Th
e other scout, with a wide forehead and dull eyes, shook his head. “You know we can’t kill any of them unless you want to explain a tek death back home.”
The first male laughed, a cold chilling sound, eyes trained on the small boy stumbling between them. “Don’t be so serious, Phen. I won’t kill the package. But I can play with the furkken brat.”
I wanted to ask Callan what furkken meant, but from the way a muscle jumped in his jaw I took it as a curse or derogatory term.
“Not with me here. Do it on your own time so I don’t get charged with misconduct. SEOH could have vids in this area. Let’s get our surveillance done and go home. This is as good a place as any to dump the incomer.”
“A little further in the middle. That way the croggle has a better chance of catching dinner. Need to keep the livestock fed, and feeding him there means we won’t have to walk through the blood to reach the transender to leave.”
The child cried out, startling the guy with the gray box.
His hand twitched, or he must have hit a button and the child screamed in pain. A single burst of terror.
I launched myself forward.
Callan shouted something at Zilya, but I’d already exploded from cover, racing toward the little boy.
The scouts were so surprised by the toddler’s sudden wailing they weren’t looking up as I charged them.
The guy holding the box lifted his head a second before I reached him, and I took advantage of the shock on his face. Moving fast and hard, I hooked an arm around his neck, slamming him to the ground.
The small box dropped from his fingertips.
I punted the strange weapon further away and spun to meet the second scout who’d abandoned the child to jump in.
Then the battle really started.
The second guy attacked me. A child’s terror-filled cries clawed the air.
Hurt a child? Pay the price.
I drove jabs at him over and over, not sure how I knew to fight this way but going on instinct. Connected with soft flesh a few times, hard bone more. Callan had joined the fray with Etoi standing back, her spear pointed at all of us.
I lost my balance. The ground had shifted beneath me. One too many hits to my head maybe?
My gaze strayed to the child just as Zilya snatched him up and rushed away from the battle.
The distraction cost me a rock-hard fist in my ribs. I sucked air at the blow, the only pause I took before immediately returning the favor with a brutal right cut to the scout’s face.
Cartilage shattered. Blood geysered from a broken nose.
That was worth the ache in my knuckles.
But the tek scouts were well trained. They didn’t back down. Continued to rain hammering blows just as punishing and with vicious precision.
Staggering back, I stumbled, then caught my balance in time to see that the scout I’d been fighting now stared past me, toward the trees.
Where Zilya held the child.
The scout sneered at me and moved toward Zilya.
Protect the child.
A blazing haze of fury clouded my vision. Hot energy started building inside me.
I yanked the scout back around. The tek-nah-tee only laughed, fists up and moving like lightning, raining hits over me again and again, the strikes pummeling my shoulders and head.
Anger so molten it threatened to sear my insides whipped through me. Strong enough that I wouldn’t back down either. Instead I fought the scout harder, forcing him away from Zilya and the boy.
Over the grunts of the attackers, I heard Callan shouting at Zilya and Etoi to run.
With one last surge, I knocked the scout backwards ten feet, rolling over and over, with me right after him.
The scout landed on his feet, spotted the gray box and scooped it up. He swung around, pointing it at Zilya.
I ignored everything except charging forward and knocking the scout’s hand away just as the box buzzed.
The gray box went flying another thirty feet away from the tek-nah-tee. My next punch landed under his jaw, snapping his head back and causing him to stumble around, arms flailing to keep his balance.
But then I stumbled sideways, too, trying to keep my own feet stable again.
That’s when I realized the ground really was shifting back and forth beneath me. My feet flew out from under me. I hit hard at the same time the scout went down.
Callan and the other grappling scout hit the ground as the earthquake erupted.
Not an earthquake, but a violent tremor. One I recognized. If I was right, that shaking announced a greater threat.
Croggle.
Rolling to my knees, then my feet, breathing hard, I glanced around. Callan and both of the scouts had snapped to their feet, shuffling with their arms stretched out to keep upright. Dirt and rocks exploded into the air when the croggle burst from beneath the ground.
Callan hadn’t been joking about this beast being larger than the one I’d killed earlier.
This one could kill all of us with the swipe of one claw.
Struggling to keep Etoi on her feet and moving the child deeper toward the tree line, Zilya looked back first at me then at Callan who yelled, “Protect him,” then turned back to face the croggle.
Zilya stared at me as if she couldn’t believe I would stand next to Callan and fight the croggle.
Callan glanced at me and shouted, “Go!”
I shook my head. Seeing Callan’s eyes warm, even for a fleeting second, sent my heartbeat thudding at a crazy speed.
The trembling stopped. Everything went deathly silent.
Callan raised his spear toward the monster, as if one weapon was going to stop that thing.
A toothpick against a mountain.
With the scouts stunned, watching the greater threat, I inched slowly over to stand within a few steps of Callan, my voice soft. “Got a plan?”
“Stay alive?”
“Good as anything I’ve got.”
He spared me a quick glance, but in that moment I saw something I wanted to call respect in his gaze. Probably my imagination, but it gave me a warm feeling I needed right then.
If I ran now, I’d have no chance to prove I was not tek-nah-tee. If I fought alongside him and convinced him I wasn’t his enemy, I had a chance to save myself and my friends.
The scout who’d zapped the little boy turned to run toward a spot where the transender pod had beaten down the grass.
The second guy held his ground. No, he stood locked in fear, his face pale beneath blood dripping from where I’d damaged skin and bone. Callan had pummeled the other guy worse.
So three against one giant beast. Not favorable odds.
Didn’t matter. We’d never make the woods before the thing reached us. Facing the beast gave us a better chance than being caught from behind.
The fleeing scout stopped before he reached the transender landing spot, searching the ground for something.
The box.
He dove for it, grasping in a smooth somersault move that landed him back on his feet in position to aim the device at the monster.
Callan and the second scout both shouted, “Nooo!”
The tek-nah-tee with the metal box paid no heed to their warning yells. He hit the button.
Must have been a stronger charge than what he’d used on the child. Blue bolts of electricity arced all over the croggle’s head, lighting up his skin where it shocked him. But whatever zap that little box had spewed out meant nothing more than spitting in the eye of a wild beast.
The croggle stood up on its two hind legs, tall as a five-level building, and roared so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. It lunged forward, pounding the ground when it hit, tossing all of us off our feet again.
Enraging the croggle with an electric charge had accomplished only one thing–to zero the monster in on the person who’d zapped him. The idiot scout had no chance to move before the croggle swung its massive jaws at him.
The first bite cut him in half at the waist, leaving tw
o legs standing. The rest of him disappeared between churning earth, spewing blood and severed body parts.
With the croggle distracted, Callan shouted, “Runnn!”
Sounded good to me. I scrambled to my feet, ready to sprint toward the forest cover.
I caught sight of the other scout, paralyzed with fear.
“Get out of here,” I called, but the guy either couldn’t hear me, or was so petrified nothing registered. If the fool stayed where he was he’d be dead in moments. The croggle was already shifting his ungainly size around, seeking new prey.
Leave the guy? He’d die for sure.
“Let the croggle have him,” Callan yelled at me as he dashed toward safety.
At that moment, the croggle’s bulging black eyes streaked with yellow veins flared wildly in the direction of the tek-nah-tee and roared, ready to kill.
CHAPTER 20
Rearing up again, the croggle prepared to lunge in another attack.
I screamed again at the scout. “Run!”
He stayed frozen in place between me and the croggle.
As the monster arched forward then plunged down, I ran full out, smashing into the scout, my body throttling us both forward. The monster’s hot breath rushed past us ahead of its jaws slamming the empty space where the scout had stood seconds ago.
The scout rolled twice with the momentum from my blow, which must have shaken him out of his stupor. Jumping up, he yelled something at me that I couldn’t hear over a loud whine.
I was too busy scrambling away from the monster now that the scout could save himself. When I turned to see the beast’s position, a massive claw swung toward me with hyper-speed.
I twisted to dive away, but didn’t move fast enough to dodge the sharp tip of a claw the size of my forearm. It raked a burning slash across my stomach and side. Arching in pain, I forced myself to keep scrambling, barely avoiding the solid thump of a foot pummeling the ground where my head had just been.
“Ayeeee! Here! Here!” I heard Callan shouting somewhere nearby. “Croggle. This way.”
Smart guy. Taunt the monster away. Then what?
Rolling my head to the side, I saw the scout sprawled on the ground with Etoi on top of him, a spear at his chest.
The tek-nah-tee yelled up at her, veins in his throat standing out.