Once she was done, she used some of the soft leaves to clean herself. She snatched up her pants and bent down, meaning to tug them back on, when she noticed the sound of rushing water. Retrieving the axe, she straightened and walked forward, turning her head to scan her surroundings again. She paused when her gaze swung downslope; there, not a hundred meters away, a shimmer of moving water was just visible through the trees.
The river.
Her mouth ached with thirst and the memory of the water’s taste.
Yuri glanced back at the shelter before returning her attention to the river. It wasn’t too far. She could get a drink, maybe even take a quick bath—the hose on the ship and yesterday’s rainstorm certainly didn’t count—and get back to the shelter before Thargen returned.
Tucking her pants under her arm, Yuri made her way carefully downslope, picking the softest grass and smoothest stones to walk on. The hem of her shirt fluttered around her bare knees.
She paused when she reached a tree that was perched on the edge of a low drop-off, where she was granted her first full view of the river. Yuri was fairly certain this wasn’t the same place they’d come to drink from yesterday, but she doubted she would’ve recognized it even if it was—the water was significantly higher today, having been swollen by the heavy rains.
Fortunately, that swelling had created a relatively shallow bulge in the river a bit farther upstream, where several large trees would provide at least partial cover. Those trees had likely been ten or twenty meters away from the water’s edge before the rain had started.
Yuri walked on, keeping herself amongst the trees until she was closer to her destination. The slope leading down to the water was an easy one, and she was thankful for it; her aches from yesterday’s long hike were making themselves known again now that she was up and about.
Focus, Yuri.
She forced herself to check her surroundings again as she approached the water’s edge. The sound of the flowing river was soothing, but it was also a distraction, making all the other forest noises harder to hear in comparison. She needed to stay alert. Smugglers and skeks were her primary fears, but she couldn’t ignore the fact that this planet had native wildlife. Just because she hadn’t seen signs of anything big didn’t mean there weren’t large, aggressive, dangerous animals out here.
Yuri would just have to be quick about this so she could get back to the shelter. She dropped her pants and the axe on the ground and stepped forward to kneel at the water’s edge. Bending over, she scooped handfuls of cold, clean, delicious water into her mouth, filling her belly. When she stood, she pulled her shirt off over her head and tossed it on top of her other belongings.
Her nipples hardened as the cold wind blew over her bare skin.
Water’s going to be even worse, Yuri. Get it over with.
After taking a few deep, fortifying breaths, she stepped in.
The water was like ice around her feet. Goosebumps broke out over her skin, and she was wracked by a shudder as that bone deep chill invaded her body. She forced herself forward until the water was up to her thighs.
“Oh, f-fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” she stuttered while hurriedly splashing water over her body, cleaning her hairless armpits, her backside, and between her legs. She chuckled despite her chattering teeth. “G-getting body hair removed w-was the best decision I m-made.”
Though there wasn’t any soap and she was freezing by the time she was done, she felt cleaner— and better—than she had in a long time. It was rejuvenating, really.
Yuri dashed out of the river, shivering anew as the wind only intensified the cold, and wrung her hair out. Water streamed down her body and limbs. She bent down and snatched up her shirt, dragging it over her head and tugging it down. It clung to her damp body, but at least it dulled the wind’s bite.
She’d just pulled on her pants and was rolling the waistline down to make them fit more snugly when she heard a snap behind her.
Yuri’s heart leapt, and she froze, clutching the pants in a white-knuckled grip. She swallowed and slowly turned, telling herself it was just a fallen branch, or a cute, cuddly animal, or a figment of her imagination.
But when she completed that turn, there was no adorable animal, there was no fallen branch, and she couldn’t convince herself that the hulking being staring at her from a few meters away was the product of her imagination—though it would’ve been right at home in the worst of her nightmares.
The alien was powerfully built, his skin a burnt red-brown, dressed in an eclectic mix of furs, tattered cloth, and dingy combat armor. He had long, pointed ears that jutted out from either side of his head, a flat nose, and large, sunken eyes that gleamed with hunger. His oversized orange irises were made bolder by the contrasting smears of black paint across his brows and cheeks. Tangled, matted hair—adorned with bits of metal, beading, and bone—hung about his shoulders. But most horrifying was his mouth. He had no lips, just the pointed, yellowed teeth of a predator bared in an unwavering, menacing grin.
A skeks.
Cruel glee flashed in his eyes an instant before he charged at Yuri.
Her body moved before her brain could give it any commands, crouching to snatch up the axe. There was no time to struggle with activating it. Grasping the weapon in both hands, she swung as she surged upright, throwing all her strength behind it.
The flat metal head of the axe struck the skeks on the underside of his jaw, the impact resonating through the haft and nearly breaking her grip. The skeks’ head snapped up and aside, and his charge faltered.
Yuri staggered backward, watching with growing horror as the skeks turned his face back toward her, his toothy grin unbroken. Blue blood seeped from a gash on his jaw. He took another step closer.
She turned and ran. “Thargen!”
Rock and pine needles bit at the soles of her feet, but she barely registered the pain. All that mattered was escaping—surviving.
I am not becoming skeks food.
A whimper escaped her. She clung to the axe as she ran, her breath sawing in and out of her constricted throat like it was made of broken glass. Heavy footfalls crashed over the ground behind her, drawing closer with every heartbeat.
“Thargen!”
She dashed between two trees and screamed when something big struck her from the side with enough force to throw her off her feet. The axe flew from her grasp, and she hit the ground hard, knocking the air out of her lungs. Pain shot through her body. Rock and pine needles dug into her side and belly. She squeezed her eyes shut and groaned, willing herself to get up, to keep moving.
A heavy weight fell atop her, caging her in on all sides. Yuri opened her eyes and looked up into the face of another skeks—this one with blazing red eyes and a jagged scar across his face.
The skeks spoke in a guttural language Yuri had never heard—but her translator provided the meaning of his words.
“Hello, little food.”
Thargen adjusted his grip on the shaft of his spear as he crept through the brush—though spear might’ve been too generous a term. The makeshift weapon was simply a tristeel combat knife tied to the end of the strongest, straightest stick he’d been able to find in the area immediately surrounding their shelter within a minute or two. It wasn’t pretty, and it seemed likely to either fall apart or break outright after a single blow, but a single thrust was all he needed.
Hopefully.
Even when alien creatures had outward appearances that were somewhat familiar in shape, proportion, and configuration, the internals were always a mystery. A killing blow on one species could be little more than a mild irritation for another.
The quadrupedal creature he was stalking—which stood a little shorter than Yuri and was covered in shaggy, reddish fur—was close enough to familiar that he’d decided to go with the usual strategy of aiming at its chest, just behind the front leg. That was the lungs on many such creatures. All it would take was for his not-quite-straight spear to strike true.
We
ll, that was all it would take once he was close enough to attack—he sure as hell didn’t trust this spear to fly straight if he threw it. He’d lost much of his patience for all this sneaking and stalking long ago, and what remained of it was stretched particularly thin now thanks to the throbbing in his groin and the lingering heat of arousal pumping from his core.
By Vorga’s flaming skull, his female didn’t even have to try hard to get him going.
He eased forward a little more, parting the foliage with his weapon to clear his field of view.
His quarry was just ahead, neck bent and head down as it drank from the bloated river, which had swollen with runoff to reach all the way up to what had been a low, grassy hill the day prior. The spot was somewhat open, with no cover once Thargen left the thicker brush behind, but he was confident in his ability to cross that grass without making a sound; those were skills he’d picked up under far more dangerous circumstances. He just needed to move deliberately and with care. The wind was in his favor, and the river would help mask any of the tiny sounds he did make. The conditions couldn’t get much better considering his lack of preparation and the unfamiliarity of this world.
But his body seemed willing to fight him on that. A steady stream of Rage and desire was running through him, the two so intertwined by now that he could barely tell the difference between them. As much as this was about obtaining fresh food, it was even more about venting that Rage, about finding a release that could not be obtained by throwing rocks and pummeling trees.
What he truly needed was a fight—a real fight—or to fuck.
He’d have to settle for just killing something for now.
Thargen emerged from the brush and stalked forward, keeping himself in a low crouch and feeling out every step. He forced himself to breathe slowly, taking in and expelling each breath through his nostrils, and willed his heartbeat to remain steady. Rage had risen enough to heighten his senses, but he could allow it no more purchase in his body and mind until the instant he was ready to make the kill.
The creature at the water lifted its head, tufted ears perking. Thargen froze mid-step and held his breath. The creature’s ears flicked, and it turned its head left—the same direction as Yuri and Thargen’s shelter.
Thargen’s heartbeat increased in volume as the pressure in his lungs intensified. His prey continued staring downriver, and he continued to hold still. He’d been incredibly fortunate to come across this animal so close to the shelter, and he refused to lose this opportunity. He was going to kill this thing, cook it, and feed the meat to his little terran, letting her lick the juices off his fingers.
Then he’d lick her juices straight from her sex.
Fuck. Been away from her too long already.
Finally, the animal lowered its head.
Releasing a long exhalation that finally eased the pain and pressure in his lungs, Thargen proceeded forward. Centimeter by centimeter, he closed the distance to his prey, feet silent on the soft red grass. A new tightness built in his chest—anticipation. His Rage stirred anew, roused by the promise of action, of violence, of bloodshed.
He altered his path to circle around to the creature’s left side, raising the spear slowly. His skin pulled taut as his muscles swelled, pumped up by Rage.
“Thargen!” Yuri’s shout echoed off the trees and over the dark river water.
The creature darted away, crashing through the undergrowth in a panicked run upriver. Thargen barely noticed. The tone of Yuri’s voice—the desperation, the fear—sent a chill through him that the wind and rain had not been able to match.
She was outside. She was downriver. She was in trouble.
He didn’t resist his Rage this time; he let it carry him toward her voice in a sprint. The hazards and terrain were lost on him. He didn’t feel the needle-like tree growths under his feet any more than he felt the uncompromising surfaces of rocks or the tufts of soft grass. He barreled headlong through the undergrowth and low branches, slowing for nothing, oblivious to the scrapes and scratches he should’ve been receiving.
Yuri.
It was the only word in his mind, as strong and steady as his pulse, amidst a storm of instinct and emotion. He latched onto her name—and onto his fury. Nothing else would be any help now. The forest was a blur of red, brown, and yellow around him, the river a strip of wavering grays.
Somewhere ahead, branches snapped, and foliage shook. Thargen wasn’t the only one racing through these woods. He sped his pace as he descended a low rise overlooking a part of the river where flooding had created a small, shallow pool butted by tall trees on one side. Two familiar scents struck him at the bottom.
One was sweet, exotic, and feminine, unmistakably Yuri’s. The other was subtle, spicy, and smoky. Blackwhorl—a potent herb the skeks often smoked in their scavenging camps, meant to alter their awareness and make the more effective hunters.
“Thargen!”
Her voice had come from much closer this time—twenty or thirty meters ahead at most, around the same place as the other sounds he’d heard—and it was more desperate, more afraid, more strained.
When she screamed a moment later, there was sheer terror in the sound.
Rage sharpened Thargen’s vision further, narrowing his focus down to the trail of broken branches and trampled vegetation leading toward Yuri’s voice. He charged onto the trail without hesitation.
In the back of his mind, buried deep beneath the primal instincts that had seized control of him, he was vaguely aware of a multitude of thoughts that could’ve been swirling through his mind in a paralyzing, panicked maelstrom at that moment. All those possibilities, all those what-ifs. There were countless horrible things the skeks could do to her, things they might already have done. There were countless scenarios that might greet him when he found her, countless skeks that could be watching him from amongst the trees even now.
But none of those thoughts even began to take shape. If nothing else, Thargen had always been good at keeping things simple.
Skeks had found Yuri.
Skeks always ran in packs.
He was going to kill some skeks and save his zoani.
Yuri cried out again, her voice coming from a thicket just ahead. The sound was quickly cut off—and followed by guttural laughter and words spoken in the harsh tongue of the skeks.
Thargen growled and leveled his spear, angling himself toward a gap between two of the larger trees comprising the thicket. That familiar battle haze enveloped his mind; he was Rage. Fire blazed at his core, lightning crackled through his muscles, and molten fury flowed through his veins, pumped by a heart that beat with the thunderous cadence of war drums.
His legs pumped harder, faster, devouring the meters between him and his destination.
One of the skeks silenced the others and hissed, “Do you hear?”
A large figure clad in tattered furs and dingy armor stepped into the opening between those thick trunks. The skeks’ sunken eyes met Thargen’s and rounded an instant before Thargen burst through the gap.
The knife at the end of the spear hit the skeks in the abdomen, punching through the old armor to plunge into flesh. The skeks grunted.
Thargen kept running, pushing the skeks backward until the skewered enemy struck another tree. The sudden stop forced the blade deeper until it, too, hit the tree with a dull thunk that Thargen felt through the shaft just before the stick snapped centimeters away from his leading grip.
He was already turning as the skeks to his right shouted in alarm, dropping his left hand to snatch the hardlight axe from its place at his thigh. He swung the broken stick backhand, cracking it across the face of a second skeks who’d been approaching.
The skeks reeled aside, caught off guard by the sudden blow. Thargen lashed out with the axe in an angled arc, following the stick’s path; he activated the blade mid-swing. The hardlight edge caught the skeks at his cheekbone, carving off a wedge of his head from cheek to mid-scalp.
Behind him, the impaled
skeks released a choked snarl.
But Thargen’s Rage had already shifted to the other two enemies beyond the faceless skeks. One was on his knees, twisted to look back at Thargen—with Yuri pinned beneath him. The other was closer, only four or five meters away, and had a large rifle in his hands, the stock against his shoulder.
The big-bore barrel swung toward Thargen.
Thargen lunged forward, ducking to catch the falling, faceless skeks on his shoulder. Blue blood poured from the gaping wound to shower Thargen’s skin.
The rifle boomed, the sound deafening in the confines of the thicket. The skeks propped up on Thargen’s shoulder shuddered, and a huge hole blasted open on its upper chest, centimeters from Thargen’s head.
Fresh gore splattered Thargen’s back, and the stench of burnt flesh hit his nose.
He heaved the dead skeks aside, and his left hand flicked out, releasing the haft of the axe. The weapon tumbled awkwardly through the air, but it didn’t need to go far. The upper curve of the blade sliced through the rifle-wielder’s thigh, opening a huge gash, before the weapon hit the ground.
The skeks’ leg gave out immediately, and he staggered back onto his other leg just as his rifle went off with another burst of thunder. Dirt and debris leapt off the ground beside Thargen’s foot.
Thargen growled and rushed forward.
A flicker of movement at the edge of his vision was his only warning before something heavy and hard slammed into the side of his head with a force that resonated through his bones, knocking him off course. Blackness descended over his vision, and the only sounds he could hear were his own pounding heart and heavy breathing.
That had either been a sledgehammer or a fucking space freighter. The skeks would have to hit him with a lot more than that if they meant to get out of this alive.
Grinning, Thargen braced his legs to regain his balance and lashed out blindly with the broken stick as his vision slowly cleared, swinging quick and hard enough to make the air itself bleed.
Savage Desire (The Infinite City Book 4) Page 23