The creature stared at me as if he were looking at a miracle, as if he—no it—found me desirable. His features were symmetrical, distinctly humanoid, except the odd color. He was a darker blue than the warriors I’d seen from Xerima, but if he hadn’t been Hive, I would have said he was actually handsome. Which was creepy. And wrong. So wrong.
And what the hell did he mean? I feel your softness inside my mind. That was just fucking creepy.
“What are you?” He tilted his head like a curious puppy and I had to shake my head, force myself to remember he was a brutal and efficient killer. A mass murderer. A leader of the creatures that hunted and killed millions and billions of people all over the universe. He blinked, slowly, and studied my face. “You look like an Earthling, or perhaps Trionite?”
He settled on his knees and waited patiently for my answer. The creature’s skin was a dark blue, like a moonlit sky at midnight. His eyes were deep, colorless pools of black. His skin was flawless, smoother than the burnished metal of his silver-and-gray uniform, the silver so polished I could clearly see my reflection in the curved piece covering his shoulder.
“What are you?” I countered. I’d never seen anything like him. As far as I knew, no one had.
“I am Nexus 9.”
I shook my head, my neural blaster aimed at his face. “No. What were you before?” I asked the question before I could think better of it. I wanted to know. Curiosity killed the cat and all that, but this creature was darkly fascinating. Disturbing. Like a mangled body lying next to a car wreck. I just couldn’t look away.
“I have always been what I am. But you have not.” He blinked, his dark blue eyelids covering the hypnotic depths of his eyes just long enough for me to regain some fucking common sense. I stepped back in time to see a bright flash of light travel through the neural fibers at the base of his skull.
“No, I have not.” The buzzing in my head intensified, as if in response to this creature’s nearness. No, I wasn’t like him. I stepped closer, curiosity drawing me to him. The neural link that Doctor Helion had implanted in my head buzzed with a strangely hypnotic tone as I looked into his black eyes. Brains didn’t have ears, or eyes, or anything like that, so I had no idea what the hell was actually happening to me, but I took another step, felt like I was drunk. Spellbound.
“You summoned me here.” He—it—smiled at me then and I took another step, my hand reaching for his cheek. I wanted to touch him, the blue of his skin looked so smooth, so perfect. I wanted to touch him, just once. Then I’d kill him and take his helmet and neural implant back to Helion.
His eyes. They were so dark, completely without color or depth. They were like an abyss, no light reflected from them. The other two, the weaklings outside the cave, had silver eyes. Repulsive.
Why had I thought that? Somehow my own thoughts were mixing with the thoughts of this Nexus and it was difficult to differentiate between the two.
The beast outside the cave made more noise, killed another Hive, and this time, when the Nexus before me twitched with pain, I felt it, too.
Loss. Agony. Despair. Like my own leg had been removed.
I collapsed to my knees as pain flooded my body. The Nexus creature before me rose and walked to me.
He was huge, almost as big as the beast outside, but he came to stand before me and I felt lulled by his presence. My pain faded, replaced by a humming in my mind that blocked out all thought, all feeling. There was nothing but my link to the creature, the connection he offered. I would never be alone again. Never be afraid. I would belong…to him.
A dark blue hand reached for my cheek and I allowed my eyelids to drift closed, unable to move away from his touch.
I wanted him to touch me, knew without it I would feel…empty. Alone. God, I was so alone inside my head. The isolation opened up inside me like a chasm and I sobbed, choking on the pain. Like a god, his mind reached for mine, offering me solace, comfort, belonging…
No. No. No.
I shook my head, trying to clear it as his fingers made contact with my flesh and sparks of power flashed through my body. I gasped at the strange sensation, like he’d somehow managed to get his fingers inside my mind and was actually stroking my soul.
It didn’t feel bad. I liked it, in fact. Began to crave it.
A thunderous sound came from the mouth of the cave. Before I could turn my head, the creature before me was gone, buried beneath the rage of an Atlan beast.
Like a spell being broken, my mind kicked back on with abject horror at what I’d done, what I’d thought. I almost rolled over like a dog and showed the Nexus my belly. I wanted to curl into myself and huddle on this cold cave floor and just…disappear.
How could I? I was about to let that thing caress me. I had actually wanted it to touch me. I’d liked it.
Oh. My. God.
I had to get the fuck out of here. Helion and the Intelligence Core would just have to send someone else to lure one of these fuckers out of hiding next time. I couldn’t do this again. No way. My head hurt like I had a chainsaw buzzing inside and I couldn’t turn it off. He’d touched me, not just my cheek, but in my mind, too. I felt dirty, gross. Violated.
And alone. So alone. Not the usual loneliness that crept around inside me like poison, this was so much more. Like I’d die if that thing didn’t stand back up and touch me, like I’d fade into nothingness, into mist, and float away on a breeze. Like I wasn’t real. My body wasn’t real. Like I wasn’t really here…
Had that creature done something to me? To the implants Helion had put inside my head?
Fuck. I rubbed at the back of my neck, the base of my skull where the small lump of the implant was hard and unforgiving beneath my fingertips. I had to get out of here, back to the medical unit and Doctor Helion. He had to take the implant out of my head. Now. Right now.
Lurching to my feet, I headed for the entrance, toward light, away from the physical struggle as the two large, powerful creatures lunged and hit one another. Somehow, the beast was fighting for our lives and keeping track of me at the same time. He yelled as I neared the mouth of the cave. “Stay! Hive! Too many.”
I’d been on the battlefield with Atlan Warlords before, and was used to their beasts’ simple, clipped way of speaking. I got the point. Hive outside the cave, and not just the trio of Nexus. If an Atlan beast said there were too many, that meant lots and lots of Hive.
I had no doubt we were in trouble here. I’d been out there with my team before the Nexus group made contact. I hadn’t known the other Coalition fighters long, volunteers from all over the universe. We’d only been training together for a few days. But still, seeing them all dead on the ground outside had been hard. How had I been the only one to survive? Was it because the Nexus leader truly did want to connect with the implant in my mind, take over my thoughts and emotions, make me disappear into him? Was this thing in my head that important? Seeing the Hive swarm and envelop the entirety of the Coalition forces on the ground had been so damn hard to watch. We were losing this planet, at least at the moment.
I’d had my own mission, though, and because of it, I was trapped behind enemy lines. This beast, the one that loomed so large inside the cave, was trapped with me.
More in control now, I turned to find the beast still grappling with the Nexus creature. The thing was not as tall or muscled as the beast, but the Hive used microscopic implants to increase strength and speed to superhuman levels. And this one was special. Very, very special.
I wasn’t at all sure the beast was going to be able to beat him. They struggled, the beast’s muscles bulging like I’d never seen before, but he could not gain the upper hand. And there was no way I was going to be alone in this cave with that thing again. My head would start buzzing and I’d be screwed, completely under that monster’s control.
Pulling the ion blaster from my thigh, I yelled at the beast, “Throw him at the wall. I’ll blast him!”
I didn’t know his name, had no idea which Atlan warrior h
e was beneath his helmet. There were several hundred in my battle group and I didn’t recognize all of them in beast mode. In addition, the armor obscured his features even more, but it didn’t matter. He was on my side, and I needed him to kill that blue bastard. I had no doubt he was a bossy, arrogant, macho-man like all the rest of them. But we either worked together, or we both died.
He heard me. A second later, he literally picked the Nexus up off the ground and threw him into the wall of the cave.
The Nexus hit with a loud crash of his silver armor, but he didn’t fall. Not like I’d hoped. He twisted in midair and landed on his feet in a crouch like a fucking cat.
He stared at me, and the strange buzzing started in my head again.
“Oh, no you don’t.” Taking aim, I fired, hitting him square in the chest before I could think otherwise.
The blast barely fazed him, but I kept at it, hitting him in dead center again and again. I wasn’t really doing much, other than keeping him from attacking the beast.
The creature took a step toward me, but a larger blast came from the side, striking the Nexus in the head.
He fell to his knees and a thrill went through me as I shot him again. The monster’s weapon, bigger than mine, was still aimed at it as he approached the creature from the side, both of us firing as quickly as our weapons would arm. I gave a passing thought to the tech buried in his head, but I didn’t care. None of it would matter if I didn’t make it out of this cave alive. Helion would just have to deal with some fried circuits.
After several more shots, the Nexus stared up at me, a look eerily like pleading on his strange blue face as the bottomless darkness of his eyes filled in.
Watching it die was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. I ignored the beast, who continued to fire, and watched with sick fascination as the nothingness of his eyes changed and became something. Dark gray and opaque, solid, real, the dull color reminded me of an unwashed blackboard smeared with chalk.
It tipped forward onto the hard ground of the cave.
When he stopped breathing, and the buzzing in my head faded to empty silence, I knelt beside him. The beast prowled, but I held up my hand to stay him. I didn’t want him to pull this creature’s head from its body. I needed it intact. No. Not me. Helion needed it intact, or at least part of it. The neural transmission juncture. The jar handle attached to the base of his spine. I just wanted to finish this damn mission, get the fuck off this planet and out of this war. A cherry on the sundae of my life would be to find a man to have hot, crazy monkey-sex with for the rest of my life. That wasn’t too much to ask, right? And according to Doctor Moor, I would have a mate waiting for me once I finished this.
I was done. God, I was so done. I hoped the doctor had found a match for me, because my fighting and spying days were over. I just couldn’t keep doing this. I felt like my mind was about to shatter into so many pieces I’d never be able to put myself back together again.
Was this PTSD? My oldest brother had been diagnosed with that right before I left home two years ago. He was a SEAL, same as my other brother and my dad before them. My dad died when I was nine, but that didn’t stop my brothers. You were nothing in my family if you weren’t a SEAL, and my mother had never forgiven me for being born female. So I joined the Air Force instead, ended up in military intelligence. And when that wasn’t enough, I had to get away, to prove myself.
So I did one better than all the dicks with pricks in my family tree and joined the Coalition Fleet. My unique skills and training caught the eye of their intelligence branch, along with my training in electronic weapons systems, and I’d jumped at the chance to make a real difference. Which put me here, in a cave. Trapped. Light years away from any SEAL. But three feet from an Atlan beast.
The blue-skinned bastard on the floor of this cave was my ultimate prize, the fucking Holy Grail in this war, and I wasn’t about to lose my shit now. Beast or no beast.
Kneeling, I tried to push the Nexus onto his side so I could access his spine, but he must have weighed four hundred pounds. I couldn’t even budge his legs. Fucking implants.
“Help me. I need to get him onto his side.” I looked up at the Atlan and nearly stopped breathing. There was no sign of non-beast counterpart behind his eyes. He was all wild animal, and his complete attention was not on the creature we’d just killed.
It was on me.
Mating Fever.
I’d seen it before, and my traitorous body, still high on adrenaline and fear, channeled the last few hours of aggression and terror into the one area I’d been hoping to devote a lot more time to in the near future…lust.
In the near future didn’t mean in the next few minutes. It meant after I’d been released from service and been matched to my mate from the brides program.
My traitorous body didn’t seem to agree with that. I wasn’t sure if Atlans had pheromones like humans, but something was coming off him in waves and I was sopping it up, even through my armor.
Through the visor of his helmet, I could see his eyes were so very pale and my pussy clenched with want, instantly wet. Intense, ice-blue eyes.
Oh, fuck yeah. I licked my lips as I took in his huge size. The way he was breathing deeply, the way his heartbeat thrummed along the length of his corded neck. His hands were as big as dinner plates. I had to wonder what else on his body was big.
I wanted more than that beast’s attention on me. I wanted his body pressing into mine up against the wall, fucking me like there was no tomorrow.
But not yet. I didn’t want to get naked with a dead body just inches away, even if it was a Nexus. Because—well—yuck. Just yuck.
Not wanting to trigger him in beast mode, I kept my voice low and controlled. Calm. “Warlord, I need your help. We must remove the spinal implant from this Hive and return it, and its helmet, to the fleet. Please help me roll the body onto its side.”
The beast didn’t know this was a special Hive, that he was a Nexus. He just knew the creature needed to be eliminated and had done his job quite well.
With a shudder, the beast knelt beside me and shoved the Nexus over with about as much effort as me rolling a soda can…downhill.
Whatever. I was human, I was female. I was used to being at the bottom of the physical pecking order out here in space. Just meant I had to be smarter than the rest of them. Which, so far, I’d managed just fine. Except, I was stuck in a dang cave, so that was still questionable.
With the Nexus turned away from me, I ignored the beast and examined the monster’s helmet and attachments. The doctor had told me what to look for, at least in theory.
With shaking hands, I reached for the arched neural tissue that bypassed his spine and connected to the base of his skull. With a slow, soft sigh, I gathered every ounce of determination and pulled. Slowly.
The tissue gave way with a sickening sound of wet suction, of flesh tearing, and I grimaced as I finished the task.
Black fluid leaked from the wound as I pulled, at least twenty long tendrils—like five-inch needles—appearing as I removed the object and broke the connection to the Nexus’s brain tissue.
I thought the extensions were dead metal, but the moment they broke free, they writhed and moved like worms searching for earth.
“Agh!” I yelled and dropped the thing onto the hard rock floor where it continued to move and search like a centipede stuck on its side. Chunks of the Nexus’s dark blue flesh clung to the base of the implant. Tissue and implant. Everything a good little girl brought home to the mad scientist in the basement.
“God, that’s disgusting.” I winced just looking at it.
“What that?” The beast’s rumble made me jump, so absorbed in the task at hand that I’d nearly forgotten he was there. His voice echoed off the walls.
“We need to get that, and his helmet, back to the Karter. That is the key to winning the war.”
If he noticed that I didn’t answer his question, he didn’t say. Instead, the beast grunted and stood. “Done wit
h body?”
I looked at the limp form of the dead Nexus and nodded. “Yes.” I was sure Doctor Helion would cream his panties if he could have the cadaver to play with. But that thing was huge, heavy, and the extraction coordinates were more than a mile away. Even with a beast along, there was no fucking way I was trying to take the body back with me.
The beast picked up the body and carried it to the entrance of the cave. He scanned outside before tossing it as far as he could. It took a second before I heard the sickening thud of it hitting the ground below.
Good riddance.
The beast turned back to me as I stuffed the odd, wriggling thing into a containment cell Helion had given me. The sack was about the size of a preschooler’s backpack, but would seal airtight. No contaminants would get in or out. The thing that seemed to want to tunnel into the nearest brain—which was mine—would be trapped within the metallic lining, and special fibers on the inside would keep the tissue samples alive until I could get it back to base. Along with the creature’s helmet, Doctor Helion would have more than enough new toys to play with.
I tracked down the Nexus’s helmet and settled the sealed bag inside it. Together, they weighed about five pounds. I could carry that out of here, no problem.
Done, I turned to find the beast watching me from just inside the cave’s entrance.
“You safe.” His huge body swayed as he spoke the oddly gentle words. I might have been safe, but he was still in full battle gear. He had yet to remove his helmet. So while he said I was safe, I knew to wait until he’d put his weapon away and removed his head protection to relax completely.
“Yes. Thank you.” I set the Nexus helmet aside, my headache returning but not as bad, more like a steady drum beat than a chainsaw. It was an improvement, and I had a ReGen wand in my pack. “We’ll be safe in here. The cave is lined with highly charged magnetite. No signals can penetrate the rock. As long as we stay away from the entrance, the Hive scans won’t be able to pick us up.”
Mating Fever (Interstellar Brides Book 10) Page 4