by Poppy Rhys
“What did you do?!” I whipped a look back at the forest where the sound was growing louder, like a stampede of animals was heading straight for us.
“We should run now!” he yelled again, already ducking into the forest on the other side of the meadow.
Before I could do anything, Lonan slung me over his shoulder and they were booking it. The ground shook so hard I could feel it through Lonan’s shoulder that was lodged into my stomach.
I lifted my head, a croak of surprise leaving me as a rushing herd of alien woolly mammoths burst through the other side of the clearing, broken branches and leaves flying in every direction.
“RUN FASTER!” I screamed, slapping Lonan’s back repeatedly. I didn’t mean to—it was just something that happened!
The air was forced out of me when Lonan leapt over a huge fallen tree like an alien track star.
What? How did he even... Never mind, he was an alien. He clearly had springs in his feet.
“DASON!” I heard Zaid roar.
Oh shit, he’s in for it now.
Dason’s laughter touched my ears over the thunderous sound of mammoth feet beating the ground. The forest around us shook, the crashing of branches picking up again.
They’d reached the forest line!
“We’re gonna die,” I murmured, my wide eyes glued to the beasts’ enormous frames, shiny black and white fur bouncing like a shampoo commercial as they barreled through the forest after us. Their golden hued tusks swayed back and forth, ready to knock anything out of their way.
The air was stolen from me again when Lonan pulled me down only to toss me away. I didn’t even have time to scream before Kahn caught me.
“What ar—”
Tossed again, my curls clouding my vision as I landed in Zaid’s arms.
They were throwing me around like a fucking football!
The forest blurred around me as I was thrown—again—back to Kahn. He was in a tree. I was tossed to him as he dangled from a branch!
The others leapt from limb to limb until they were standing nearby. Kahn’s arm gripped around my middle, my feet hanging above a deadly drop.
My fingers dug into his arm and I wished he’d turned me around so I could cling to him like a spider monkey instead.
The stampede rushed by below. They had no idea we were standing above them.
Well, they were standing. I was dangling.
Once the crashing died down and we couldn’t hear it anymore, Kahn dropped me. My limbs flailed in all directions before Lonan caught me.
“You asshole!” I shouted down at him because he’d already leapt to the ground. I was completely over this business of being thrown around.
A smirk was all I got. No apologies, no guilty looks. A smirk.
On the ground, in the mess of debris, Zaid’s hands made a grab for Dason’s throat, but he quickly ducked out of the way, and the dark look on Zaid’s face made me think he’d flatten Dason once he got his fists on him.
“Hey!” I stepped between them, and thankfully, they stopped barreling into each other, because I’d be about as battered as a punching bag right now.
“What did you take this time?” Zaid bellowed, and I didn’t think I’d ever seen him so furious.
Dason glared at Zaid, which was completely opposite to what I was used to seeing. Dason was always so playful and quick to smile.
“Let’s just cool down,” I placed my hands on both their chests, urging them further apart. I imagined mountains would be easier to move, but they finally backed off.
Dason removed the yellow football from underneath his arm and walked over to a tree where he slammed it against the hard bark. A loud crack vibrated the air.
At first, I thought he did it because he was angry, but that wasn’t the case. He split open the football and handed me the filled half.
“Err...” I held it up to sniff the gooey white stuff that oddly resembled pudding. Smelled similar to bug spray. “What’s this?”
“Etchi. A treat,” Dason smiled, his former glare completely gone and had I not seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it’d been there.
“Why were those things chasing us?” The kind of treat I was thinking of didn’t smell like bug spray. Even the name sounded a bit like itchy. Maybe I was supposed to slather it on, because whatever biting gnats were in the air were really driving me batty.
Dason sighed.
“Did you steal this?” I pinned him with a suspicious eye.
“They had plenty,” he shrugged. “I didn’t think they’d miss one.” When I said nothing, he quickly rambled. “That baby was being selfish.”
I startled. “You stole this from a baby mammoth?!”
“What’s a mammoth?”
“Those things that were chasing us!”
“Those were doka’s,” Kahn informed me. I turned an evil eye on him, because I still wasn’t over the fact that he dropped me. He didn’t say anything more, but he was still smirking.
God, he got under my skin.
Why did he have to be so pretty?
What was I saying before?
“Eat it,” Dason urged. So it wasn’t meant to be slathered on my body. I was still hesitant to eat anything that smelled of bug spray, but they hadn’t fed me anything bad for my health yet, so I went to dip in a finger.
Lonan grabbed my wrist. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Dason, clean her hands.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, because Lonan was an alien germaphobe and it made me inwardly chuckle.
A fine mist materialized and swept over my hands while Lonan held my etchi. I was unsure why it stunned me—I was clearly still dumbfounded by their manipulation of elements—but it seemed so strange when the mist took away all the dirt and my hands weren’t even wet afterward.
“Thank you.”
Dason leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead and Lonan deposited the etchi back into my grasp where I hesitantly dipped in a finger and tasted it.
“Oh my god...”
I moaned.
“Oh my god!”
It was the best faux bug spray I’d ever had! Not that I’d ever tasted bug spray, but this was amazing!
“It’s like—” I took another big dollop and moaned around my finger again. “It’s hot fudge and caramel pudding! That’s what this is!”
“No,” Dason said slowly, “it’s etchi.”
“Stop ruining this for me.” The others chuckled as I scooped more and more into my mouth. “You stole pudding from a baby,” I mumbled around a mouthful, “and I’m not even mad.”
Rezz moseyed from the other side of the mowed down path we were standing in, his tail rattling. He’d had the right idea and veered off when the mammoths showed up. I should’ve gone with him.
“Hey boy,” I crooned, dipping my finger again and holding it out for him to lick. His big bristly tongue worked over my hand and Lonan groaned.
I snickered. He was probably having a mini meltdown.
Lonan sighed. “Wash her hands again.”
After I was cleaned up, I planted a kiss on Dason’s cheek, and then Zaid’s, because he was still a bit grumpy.
“Next time you’re trying to feed me, let’s start with etchi instead of oysters.”
I think I could live off dessert for the rest of my life.
IT WAS DARK BY THE time we stopped for the night and despite the many breaks, I was pretty beat.
“Lonan and Dason will take first watch,” Zaid uttered, voice low. He lay down on the grass, and I could see his hand pat the spot beside him through a sliver of moonlight breaking through the canopy.
I plopped down without a second thought. Kahn was at my back almost instantly, sandwiching me between the two valos.
As soon as Kahn spooned me—his arm draping my middle, tucking my ass flush against his hips—I snort-laughed.
I didn’t mean for it to sound so loud, but in the silence, they all heard it.
Zaid’s body—so clo
se to my front I could feel my nipples involuntarily harden against his chest—stiffened. “What?”
I snort-laughed again.
“What is she doing?” Dason whispered.
I was full on shaking with the giggles, face buried against Zaid’s chest as Kahn continued to spoon me. “Nothing,” I snorted out. “It’s just that Kahn’s the bad boy, and he loves to cuddle-spoon!”
Lost it. Couldn’t help it, especially when Lonan’s curious, confused voice lowly asked, “What’s ‘cuddle-spoon?’”
It was too dark to see his face in the shadows, but I could tell by his tone he had that pinched expression, a question lodged right between his sleek brows.
By this time my laughter had devolved into full body-shaking wheezes as I burrowed my face against Zaid.
“Is she breathing?” Dason queried, but I could hear the smile in his words.
I gasped, my laugh pitching loudly enough with the burst of oxygen that Zaid clamped a hand over my mouth. Now I sounded like a smothered baby seal, squeaking between two walls of muscle.
Did I mention exhaustion sometimes made me loopy? Everything became extra hilarious when I was deliriously tired. No alcohol required.
When I’d calmed down enough to breathe normally, Zaid removed his hand.
In the quiet, Kahn asked, “Why am I a bad boy?”
I lost it again, and Zaid’s hand returned. He shifted, and I could just imagine he was glaring at Kahn in the dark for starting me up again.
In between puffs of air muffled behind a hand, I exclaimed, “Yes, Kahn, why are you such a bad boy?”
“She’s making no sense,” Lonan whispered.
“Dason...” Zaid’s rumbling tone was accusatory, as if he was suspicious Dason had done something diabolical to my sanity.
“I didn’t do anything,” he sighed, clearly on the same wavelength as me.
My tired laughter finally died down now that my middle burned with exhaustion. I exhaled, a last chuckle escaping me when I splayed my hands over Zaid’s chest and wiggled my butt against Kahn to get comfortable.
“Goodnight,” I murmured.
“Goodnight,” they all whispered.
Just as I was about to drift off, Kahn mumbled, “I’m not a bad boy.”
I laughed myself to sleep.
A SHRIEK PIERCED THE silence.
I was awake from a dead sleep and on my feet immediately, my body crouching as I assessed my surroundings.
I’d never forget the sound of those screams, nor the image of the monster they came from that’d been burned into my mind’s eye that night we crashed.
“Ak’rena,” Zaid whispered.
Another shriek closed in from the left just as two more echoed from the right.
“We’re too close to their territory,” Kahn growled, his arms lighting up with his current. Lonan’s flared next, the ghostly hue like a beacon to anything that could see.
Dason said the ak’rena were blind, so something else must’ve been leading them to us, because they were getting closer, corralling us like cattle.
I had no weapons—the rock shard lost in the confusion during the stampede—and my instincts were telling me to run, but Dason’s fingers were wrapped around my arm, keeping me anchored.
“Trust us,” he told me, stormy eyes boring into mine and I felt myself nodding.
The ak’rena sprang, two on each side of our small campsite, and their size seemed even bigger up close.
Again, my feet ached to run without any weapons on my person, but Dason’s words kept me in place. They surrounded me, backs to me as they faced off the alien predators, taking them further away from me.
Lonan’s electricity struck, lighting up the vicinity and creating a crack so loud I was forced to cover my ears. The static licked across my skin.
Their screams—god, their screams!—rivaled the cracks of lightning, their pitch so high I swore it could shatter glass. My eyes were nearly crossing.
Something else sounded from the bush, something with a deeper, guttural call that gurgled through the chaos.
I dodged to the left as a long, spindly limb with a needle-point edge struck out, and just missed Dason’s shoulder.
“Kricks!” Kahn shouted as he and Zaid held down an ak’rena that was screaming and struggling beneath them. Blood pooled out of its mouth like Zaid was sucking the life from it while Kahn electrocuted its body, burning through the thick plates.
Lonan held off another ak’rena, dodging left and right with every long, sharp appendage that struck out from whatever the fuck a krick was.
I hit the ground, trying to avoid the next krick spear, and I got a full view of exactly what was attached to it.
Wished I hadn’t seen it.
It looked like a mutant green featherless turkey: long neck, bulging yellow, pupil-less eyes, and instead of a beak, there was just a wide mouth full of protruding, crooked, needle teeth.
I hate this fucking planet. I hate it!
Its body had no feet. It was short, and round with four lengthy, multi-jointed legs that lashed out quicker than seemed possible.
I was so fucking over turkey-spiders and shrieking centipedes!
A rock lying a few feet from me caught my attention and I swiped it, standing and taking quick aim at the krick I saw. I pulled back my arm and let it fly.
It landed right against its round body, knocking it to the ground where it scurried to right itself before swaying to the side and collapsing.
Wait, what?
Was that how easy they were to kill?
I picked up another rock, turning and taking out a second krick. Clearly, I was playing the wrong sport as a kid. I loved soccer, but maybe I should’ve tried baseball.
When I turned next, Lonan was staring at me, a grin pulling at his mouth, lightning striking down.
“Beautiful.” He was close enough that I heard it, just barely.
I bent down to grab another rock, and when I stood upright, the harrowing sound of another scream pierced my being.
It was me.
I realize it was coming from me. I was the one screaming as I watched Lonan’s chest get impaled by a long talon from behind.
He stared at me, eyes widened in shock, as if he couldn’t believe what just happened.
The talon withdrew from his chest, leaving a wound that gushed his dark blue blood.
I lunged for him, my hands reaching out as he dropped to his knees. Dark fluid coated his lips as it drooled from his mouth on his next harsh exhale.
His hands covered the wound as if he just realized there was a hole there.
“Lonan!” I cried, crashing to the ground as his body collapsed. I pressed both my hands to the gushing wound to try to stop the bleeding. “Lonan!”
The screams of the monstrous creatures grew as the forest shook around us with the roars of the valos, as if my cries gave them a new boost to massacre what threatened us.
“Tell me what to do,” I moaned, my vision blurring and my hands trembling. The bleeding didn’t slow and it slickened my fingers. My heart hammered fast enough I could feel it clogging my throat. “Tell me how to help you!” My voice was cracking, making it harder to utter more words, and the jittery sob that shuddered from my lungs hurt my chest.
“I’m—” he coughed, choking on his own blood. “I’m okay, Char—”
“You’re not okay!” I wanted to slap him, the idiot. There was a hole in his chest!
Three roars joined the screams as the others slashed and hacked and used the elements against the predators that just wouldn’t give it up.
I chanced a glance at them; Kahn electrified anything he encountered, and Dason and Zaid sucked every ounce of water from their victims, blood leaking from their eyes and mouths.
They were fighting to protect me, to protect us.
Lonan’s chest shuddered beneath me and I gazed down at him. His eyes were closed, his head to the side as he lay motionless in the beaten down grass.
“Lonan?” I w
hispered. My bloodied hands went to his face, cupping his cheeks, the curved spikes along his jaw pressing into my palms.
He didn’t move. His muscles didn’t tense like they normally did whenever I touched him.
The hollowed whistle of my voice left my throat. “Lonan?” I gave his shoulders a rough shake, watching as a fat, blue droplet rolled from the corner of his mouth and into his beautiful silver hair.
Leaning forward, I laid my cheek against his as I draped myself over him and wept.
He was dead.
My Lonan was dead.
TWENTY-ONE
SILENCE CAME AFTER the last scream died and the sizzling dissipated from Kahn’s final kill. Rezz’s head lay over my back as I held onto Lonan, the big animal seemingly trying to comfort me.
My nose was completely stuffed, my head pounded, and my eyes felt like cantaloupes. I didn’t know if I had any more tears inside of me.
When had I ever cried like that?
Never. Nothing in my life had ever brought me to weep.
The bones in my chest ached, and I could swear a piece was missing, broken—no matter how impossible that seemed—and I didn’t know how I was going to make myself stand and carry on.
What would happen to Lonan’s body? We couldn’t just leave him there to be scavenged by animals.
My eyes stung all over again just thinking about it.
I’d never buried anyone before. I’d never wept over the death of any person, yet I knew people lost loved ones every day. How did they do it? How did they pick themselves up and function?
Lonan had only been a part of my life for a blip, but realizing that he’d never call me little human ever again left me feeling... hollow.
That meant something. I was crying over an alien who had become something to me when I wasn’t paying attention.
And now it was too late.
The grass moved behind me. Rezz moved off me and arms draped around my middle, trying to lift me from Lonan’s dead body.
“No,” I croaked, not wanting to leave him.
“Charlie—”
“I said no!” I slapped Dason’s hands away, but he didn’t retreat. Instead, he pulled until I had no choice but to let go of Lonan’s lifeless form.