by Autumn Dawn
Author’s Note
Vana’s prediction came true. In time she gave birth to many daughters; sweet, beautiful girls who grew into strong women. Though she never got to bear sons of her own, she watched in satisfaction as first her adopted sons, then her blood children, bred both granddaughters and grandsons of their own. Though she never lifted a sword, both Vana and the women of her generation managed to save an entire race from destruction.
As for their enemies, Nikon’s twisted nation, they eventually grew old and died out, unable to produce issue. Perhaps that was justice and mercy enough.
Beast Wars
Autumn Dawn
CHAPTER 1
Dey leaned against a giant tree and watched the Beasts ride in. There were six of them this time, and all rode hover sleds shaped like animals. The glowing eyes of their fantastical beast-headed helmets made them look alien and dangerous. Dey was one of those who watched them with suspicion. Allowing the Beasts to come in, even for trading day, was a bad idea.
One Beast turned his head to stare at her. A shiver kissed her spine as he continued to watch her. Unwilling to provoke a scene, Dey turned and walked away.
One month later.
Good. The bad moon was rising.
Dey drew in a deep breath, quelling her adrenaline rush into something more malleable. Legend might have it that the bad moon was the undoing of maidens and favored only wild young men, but tonight this moon was going to open a door to untold treasure.
Sweet, wild night air filled her lungs, laden with the scent of blooming swamp plants. The tree she was perched in swayed gently with a mild spring wind, causing its leaves to rustle and whisper. Below her a river, swollen from the winter storms, had cut a new channel dangerously close to the ziggurat on its banks. One day the rushing waters would engulf the ruins entirely and destroy the prize within.
That was all the more reason for them to steal it first.
“Soon now,” her friend Luna whispered. She checked her laser gun one last time.
“The sooner the better.” Dey rubbed the chill bumps on her arms vigorously. She hated these nighttime raids, but not enough to give them up. Her part of the booty could be had no other way.
She eyed Luna, thinking that one of them had to be crazy to keep this up. “Creepy old temples.”
Luna grinned. “If you think so, why do you come?”
For my maps, and to save your silly behind if something goes wrong. “For the thrill, of course.”
The shadows on the moon dial of the flat-topped pyramid inched closer to their goal. Only at the full rising of the bad moon, when the parent moons were fast asleep, did the opportunity come to raid this ziggurat. It had taken them weeks of clambering all over the jungle-claimed heap and careful digging, but they’d uncovered the hieroglyphics and ancient warnings. Thanks to them and Luna’s sister’s careful research, they’d known what to expect.
Dey grinned. Big sister had never intended her research to be used for this.
She glanced at her partner. Moonlight glinted off Luna’s blond hair, bleaching it white. Tomb raiding was in Luna’s blood. Nothing excited her like stealing a piece of her birthright from those who’d spawned her. It was revenge, and for her it was fun. Had Dey not volunteered to accompany her she would have come alone and risked herself for the thrill.
Not that anything living still haunted these piles of crumbling stone. No, the guardians of these temples had long ago forsaken them for other pastures.
Well, most of them.
A soft chime split the air as moonlight hit full upon the moon dial, reflecting off the silvery fin on top to a precisely placed mirror set in one of the broken columns that had once held the roof. A concealed door slid open. This was it!
Dey jumped out of the tree after Luna, flexing her knees as her boots hit the gritty stone. Laser gun drawn, she watched as Luna yanked a thick rod from her tool belt, held it in the doorway and thumbed a release switch. It telescoped, jamming the stone door so they wouldn’t be trapped inside.
Provided they survived, of course.
The moment they crossed the threshold the door tried to grind shut. The bar quivered, but held. A faint vibration in the delicate bones of Dey’s ears warned her of danger as she donned her night vision goggles, stolen from another buried site.
Luna needed no such augmentation.
With the utmost caution, they descended the ancient stone staircase, testing their surroundings with senses honed by danger to razor sensitivity. Five steps down, Luna stopped.
“Paranoid little beasties, weren’t they?” Dey whispered with graveyard humor. The subtle buzz in the air had increased to a subsonic whine that raised the fine hairs all over her body.
The corridor in front of them remained dark.
Luna took a pebble from her pocket and tossed it into the quiet stairway. Instantly it flashed red and evaporated.
She nodded. “Motion-sensitive diffuser beam.” She drew a faceted, mirrored ball from the same pocket and tossed it in the hall. “Let’s see you eat this,” she muttered. There was a small explosion of white light and a loud, zap!
The ball clunked to the ground, unharmed. Satisfied, she strolled forward, picked it up and stuck it back in her pocket.
Ten steps down the stairway ended in a black chasm ten feet wide and the width of the passage. On the other side the corridor stretched, ending in a faint golden glow.
A false end, Dey thought as she watched Luna turn to her left, close her eyes, and feel along the wall. The joining was very smooth, but her sensitive fingertips must have picked up the outline of a door. Further searching revealed the catch.
Luna smiled and drew her gun, hit the release on the door and jumped back.
The panel exploded against the opposing wall with the force of a battering ram, shattering against the stone. Red eyes glowed from inside the swirling dust, just beyond the black square where the door had been. Fear and thrill sped through Dey’s veins as the robotic guardian, still for uncounted years, rushed them. They fired. There was a Pop! Ping! Thwang! The beast-headed giant crumpled to the ground, trailing smoke.
Luna stood over it in disgust. “We barely hit the thing, and look! The smoke’s not even coming from there.”
Dey toed it cautiously. “Huh. Guess not even the ancient Beasts could make a device that lasted forever.”
Luna shrugged and sheathed her gun. Eager to get her hands on the unguarded technology of ancient civilizations, she entered the now-lighted passage.
Dey followed slowly, alert for danger. According to the ancient warnings the robot had been the last menace, but one never knew. Just beyond the darkened hallway she could see the sealed room she knew was full of weapons and machinery that would bring a pretty price from the collectors in their settlement. Even though none of them chose to fight in the far-off Beast Wars, they were eager to arm in the unlikely event that the conflict was ever brought within the boundaries of their swamps.
Just as Luna’s foot landed on the threshold, Dey looked up, and yelled. Something huge and heavy dropped down on her from above. Dey fought like a madwoman, kicking and twisting until her teeth found purchase.
“Ow! Little witch,” a familiar male voice complained.
Surprised, Dey let go and looked up. “You!”
“Hello, midget.” Keg grunted as the little fireball stomped his instep in fury and tried to bite him again. “Glad to see you, too,” he grumbled as he spun her around and pinned her to the wall for a quick frisk.
“Get your hands off of me, you goon!” She tried to strike back at him, but was foiled when he twisted her arm behind her back, held it in a particularly uncomfortable position and flattened her to the wall.
“Go easy on me, will you?” he asked with as much humor as his exasperation would allow. Who did she think she was, a war goddess? “I’m afraid of pain.”
She mumbled something especially uncomplimentary.
He grinned behind her back. “What? I can’t hear you
with your lips on the wall.” She grunted, but relaxed enough to show her willingness to cooperate, so he released her arm and patted her down.
“That’s not a weapon,” she grumbled when his hands brushed impersonally against her small but firm breasts.
“Maybe in the right hands,” he murmured appreciatively, and slid his hand inside her bodice to withdraw a tiny grenade. “But I think this is, don’t you?”
She shut up, and her sullen silence continued as he relieved her of explosives, her gun and assorted sharp objects. The woman was packing enough for a small army. Her good behavior ended abruptly when his hands brushed over her personal area, strictly as a matter of course. She tried to hit him, but he pressed his palm against her back, keeping her to the wall.
“Relax, little girl,” he said soothingly as he slowly eased off and let her turn around. “Just checking for surprises.”
Her eyes narrowed behind her blue goggles as she yanked them down around her neck. “There’s nothing there that you need to know about, swamp rat.”
Keg shook his head and gave her a small, guiding push toward the light. “Trust me, midget, I wouldn’t want to know.” That wasn’t strictly true, of course, but his healthy male interest wouldn’t interfere with his job just now. Dey and Luna had been crossing too many lines lately. It was time to put a stop to these adventures before somebody got hurt.
Dey gasped as she caught sight of her friend stretched out on the ground in the lighted chamber, surrounded by Keg’s friends. “You didn’t kill her, did you?”
Armetris, the man at Luna’s side, ignored her question and felt for a pulse. His face relaxed, telling Dey that all was well. He scowled at Razzi, the warrior who’d brought her down. “You didn’t need to be so rough, you lug. You know her symbiont is just for show.”
All eyes turned to the silver wristlets he spoke of. Though they were filigreed in the pattern of the living creature it resembled, they didn’t move to heal the slight swelling at the back of Luna’s head, as a true symbiont would do for its human host.
But then, Luna was a little something more than human.
Unfazed by the criticism, Razzi shrugged his massive shoulders. The movement made the light flash on his symbiont, the same as they all wore. “I thought the goal was to give her a scare to keep her out of the old temples. Her finds are stirring up too much trouble. I couldn’t do that by giving her a long kiss goodnight.” His gaze moved to Dey as he spoke.
Keg chuckled and she glared at him. He could almost read her mind. Anal male humor, he thought as she wrinkled her nose with disgust.
The humor left him as he looked at Luna’s unconscious form. This was no light matter.
“Besides,” Razzi continued, “had we not disabled the guardian, she might have gotten more than a sore head.”
Armetris fingered the hematite earring in his lobe as he considered the woman lying at his feet.
Keg knew from his cousin’s letters that once Luna would have listened had Armetris asked her to stop her activities. For that matter, she would have traveled the length of the swamps by snake-back had she thought it would impress him. The teenage Luna had been an amusing, but lovesick, tagalong; always right behind the young men who’d followed Armetris into danger. As often as they’d shake her, she would show up in the middle of their adventures at the worst possible times. It had come to either teaching her a warrior’s survival skills or tying her up before they left home, something that would be difficult to explain to her overprotective brother. About the time the slim girl had developed budding breasts and unwittingly caught the interest of two of the young warriors who’d attached to their group, Armetris had to forever end her adventures. She hadn’t taken well to the exile, but what else could he have done?
The men who had tried to rape her had suffered worse.
Keg’s jaw tightened as he recalled what else his cousin Armetris had told him. Since her exile from ‘the boys’ Luna had taken to sulking in the swamps for days, sometimes weeks at a time. Even as she’d grown into adulthood her hostility toward Armetris had not passed. She lived to cause him trouble. Her newest pastime, this technology tomb raiding, had gotten out of hand. Lately all they’d done was chase down and retrieve the things she’d sold to others, hiding them well out of the reach of innocent hands. To give her the credit due her, she’d kept the more damaging items out of the settlement; hiding them away in a yet-to-be-discovered spot. They’d find it. They had to. But first they had to deal with her.
And deal with her man-eating sidekick. He considered the petite Dey. Early twenties or not, she could still pass for a much younger girl with the pink ribbons woven in her dark hair. Even the slight pout to her full lips whenever Keg was near and the way she looked at him sideways, under her lashes, made her seem younger.
Just now she stood there, arms crossed, pink nails tapping, and a mulish cast to her pretty features. It was ludicrous.
“Whatever moved you to think you could guard her back, midget? One of the spiders crawling through these tombs could wrap you up and have you for a snack.”
She bristled. “A spider like you?”
She’d meant it as an insult, but still his lips curved into a provocative smile. “A leading question if ever I heard one. And here I thought you didn’t like me.” He winked at Razzi, who chuckled.
Dey fluttered her lashes at him, but her expression remained irritable. “How could I not like an overgrown, obnoxious geek with a bad haircut,” she eyed his long topknot and the cropped hair below his ears, “bad taste in jewelry,” she wrinkled her nose at his turquoise earring, “a tattoo he thinks is sexy,” she arched a brow at the black thorns circling his biceps, “and poor bathing habits?”
The bathing crack was off the mark and juvenile besides, but he dismissed it as desperation, since it had been a while since they’d traded insults and she was obviously rusty. But still.
He leaned forward and breathed deeply of her scent, his nose almost touching her neck, relishing her startled exhalation. “Hm. You smell pretty ripe, too. It’s hard to find fresh water in a swamp, isn’t it?” It was no truer than her comment, but it did shut her up.
Armetris came to a decision. “She’ll live,” he pronounced, slinging Luna over his shoulder as he rose to his feet. Her hands dangled down his back, brushing across his leather jacket as he moved. Razzi trailed along behind.
After gesturing for the still simmering Dey to precede him, Keg fell in behind him, killing the lights in the now empty chamber.
Luna would never find where they’d stashed the hoard now, even if she were dim enough to come back. Not that he could see her braving the backdoor again, not after this. A smile curled his mouth.
It was so much easier to use the front door, like them.
Hunger woke her.
Dey stirred and winced. She was lying on someone’s bedroll, at the base of a swamp tree with huge aerial roots, and a rock was poking her in the back. Someone had draped a bug screen over the roots, using them as a tent to protect her and Luna from bites. There was a loud splash to her right as something submerged, confirming their location as still in the lower swamps. By the arc of the moon it was well past midnight, edging toward daybreak.
A fire crackled to her right, and she turned her head to squint at the dark shape beyond it. Razzi glanced at her, then went back to his whittling, ignoring her.
The covers fell to her lap as she sat up. Exhaustion from the night before encouraged her to lie back down, but she resisted, patting herself down for the packet of cleansing tissues she kept for moments like these. The gentle pop and hiss of the fire wasn’t quiet enough to cover her swearing. Someone had taken her combat vest.
“Having a bad morning?” Keg sat up and tossed off his own bug protection, then reclined on one forearm, watching her. The man had the uncanny ability to wake at the slightest noise; his blue eyes more alert than hers could ever be so early in the morning. Even so, he was human, for his accent, an oddity in a settlement with
few new arrivals, betrayed the huskiness of recent sleep.
Sub-human, she grumbled. The blankets slipped down his bare, muscular chest, and in spite of herself she sucked in a breath. No man should look so good that early in the morning, she thought testily; especially one whom she was determined not to like. Thoroughly put out, she groused, “Where’s my gear? I need to find my stuff.”
He reached behind him and tossed it to her.
She fumbled in the pockets until she found the tissues, sighing with pleasure as she wiped the grime from her face and hands. Someone had left his canteen by her, so she took a swig, dampening her dry mouth. Then she stood up, placed her hands on her lower back as she gingerly stretched. Her brown pants shifted uncomfortably low on her hips, the lacing loose from hours of sleep. An itch started on her side just under her bustier as the tight muscles pulled and relaxed. Dey scratched it absently with one hand as the other felt around the back of her neck for the claw she kept on a chain. Every time she slept the thing worked its way to the back, and even that faint pressure felt uncomfortable on her windpipe.
An appreciative growl rumbled from Keg’s direction. “Just a little more to your right, if you please.”
Dey dropped her arms and scowled at him. His hair had slipped from his leather thong and now wafted in a silky fall around his shoulders. At the moment he was pretending to leer at her with all the interest of an adolescent.
At least she thought he was shamming.
Disgusted, she flipped her raveling braid out of her way and pulled on her vest and boots. She appropriated the canteen, but left the bedroll. It was only a few hours walk back to the settlement from here.
She bent to nudge Luna. “Hey, wake up.”
Luna moaned something unintelligible and rolled over.
Exasperated, Dey shook her harder. “Come on, girl. Get up!”