Coletti Warlords: Just Desserts (8 page)

“It gets better with time,” Talree reassured me.

“Remember that when I puke on your boots.” I looked around. We had landed on a small island of stone. “Yay. No slime.”

Talree frowned. “It’s too quiet.”

I chewed on my lower lip. The eerie silence was unnerving. What had happened to all the critters? And what the hell was hanging from the trees? It almost looked like strands of white silk. “Something nasty lives here.”

Talree raised his laser rifle. “I agree.”

My skin itched. The sensation of being watched was getting stronger, and whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly.

I took a closer look at the trees. Oh, hell no. That couldn’t be webbing, could it? I stepped closer, and a sticky substance caught at my face. I jerked away, and an exotic mortuary of the dead fell on me.

I freaked.

Talree watched in astonishment as I screamed blue bloody murder and fought to get the carcasses off me. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Get ’em off. Get ’em off.”

My pushy mate surged into my mind, stopped my frantic attempt to brush the remains off me.
“Enough! They can’t hurt you.”

I glared at Talree. He had missed the point entirely.
“Maybe, but it’s a fucking web. How big do you think the fucking spiders are?”

Right on cue, down came a spider. It was the spittin’ image of a black widow on steroids.

With a shriek that would have done a banshee proud, I pulled my laser pistol and fried it.

Its relatives descended from the trees, intent on turning us into dinner.

“Die, you bastards. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die.” I was dimly aware of Talree at my back, effortlessly killing the horde of spiders swarming toward us.

Talree commanded, “Kaylee. You can stop. All the Kotsors are dead.”

They were? I blinked in amazement and scanned the area. Whew! No more humongous, eight-legged freaks. I let out a shaky breath and rubbed at my twitching skin. God, it still felt like I had critters on me.

Talree grabbed my arms and shook me. “Predators are drawn to cries of distress. You cannot lose control again. It’ll get both of us killed.”

He was 100 percent right. I wearily wiped the sweat out of my eyes. “You need to understand how much I hate spiders. Why I
hate
them.”

“It makes no sense. You pursue the Rodan and Tai-Kok without fear.”

I shrugged. “The Rodan and Tai-Kok don’t have eight legs.”

A muscle ticking in his jaw, Talree instructed, “Tell me what happened.”

“Well, about a year ago, I killed a few Tai-Kok without backup. That didn’t make my brother Caleb very happy.”

Talree bared his fangs in a snarl. “You attacked six of them. Alone?”

Was he snooping around in my head? “Ah, yeah. I did. Now, can I continue with my story, or do you want to yell?”

“Continue.”

“Anyhoo, as punishment, Caleb gave me the warrant detail. That’s where I get to pick up idiots who have failed to pay their tickets. Which is the pits, because the bad guys always rabbit on you. Bet you didn’t know this, but an officer wears about forty pounds of gear. Running is not fun even when it’s not a hundred and ten degrees in the shade.” Shit, was I having one of those blonde moments? Was I babbling? Nah.

“You’re babbling.” Talree rubbed his forehead like he had the migraine from hell.

“Sorry. You kinda make me nervous.”

“Do I?”

“Ah…yeah. Moving on. The first warrant was for fishing without a license. C’mon, how stupid is that? What an utter waste of my time. Caleb knew that Mister I-don’t-have-a-fishing-license was an unstable ass who collected spiders for the university. But, did he tell me? Hell, no. He thought I needed to be taught a lesson.”

Talree stomped on a still-moving Kotsor.

“They’re all dead, huh?”

“Continue with your story,” Talree instructed.

Someone was getting pissy. “The jerk was unloading his catch of the day when I arrived. He took one look at my uniform and dumped a container of wolf spiders on my head. On my fucking head. You ever seen one?”

Talree just stared at me.

“They’re big. They’re hairy, and momma spider has about a zillion babies riding on her back. I stomped on one, and those little suckers went running in every direction. I did the Mexican hat dance on their asses. Which pissed off the jerk. He said I was ruining his business. Me? Ruin his business? He was lucky I hadn’t shot him. In an effort to keep from going to jail, the creep shoved me into the back of his van and locked me in.”

I shuddered. “God, the spiders were everywhere. In my bra, crawling up my pants legs, and scurrying about in my hair. Ugh!”

“You shot the door lock off?”

“I did.”

“And you hunted him down?”

“Yep, but the Tai-Kok got to him before I could slap the cuffs on.”

I felt Talree moving about in my mind, and the need to run screaming into the swamp faded away.

Talree asked, “Better?”

“Yeah. I think I love you.”

A smile pulled at his mouth. “Good.”

The sounds of children sobbing suddenly filled my mind.
“Help us.”

“What the hell?” I looked around. “Did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

I reached out mentally, searching for the source. They were close. Very close.
“Hey, guys, where are you?”

“Mother dead. Scared,”
they wailed.

“I know, sweeties, and we’re going to help you. Do you know where you are?”

“Lost.”

Talree pointed to an octopus tree covered in webbing.
“There.”

H wrapped an arm around my waist and teleported us to the tree.

I peered through the silken strands. Glowing emerald eyes stared back at me.
“Hello there.”

“Want go home,”
the babies cried in unison.

Talree carefully burned away the webbing with his laser pistol.

I held out my hand.
“C’mon. You’re safe now. We won’t let those nasty Kotsors hurt you. C’mon out, and we’ll take you home.”

To my utter horror, six little golden tarantula-like spiders crawled up my arm. “Oh God. You knew they were spiders, didn’t you?”

Talree chided me. “The universe is filled with thousands of intelligent life-forms.”

My skin crawled as they swarmed up my neck. “Do they bite?”

“What do your Siren senses tell you?”

The vibes they gave off were innocent, childlike. “Harmless, but—”

“We can leave them here,” Talree said nonchalantly.

Prick. He knew damn well I wouldn’t leave children behind. I was a cop. It was my job to protect them.

One of the babies crawled across my chin and peered up at me.
“Scared.”

I very carefully stroked its silky fur with my finger.
“I know, sweetie. Talree and I will keep you safe. Okay?”

“Promise?”

I shot Talree a glare. The bastard was laughing.
“I promise.”

A thousand biting fire ants tromped across my mind. Kotsors. I could sense dozens of them skittering toward us. “More of those freaks are heading our way.”

“They’re trying to surround us,” Talree added grimly.

How utterly wonderful. I had always wanted my innards sucked out.

The frightened babies quickly covered my face.
“No. No. No! Get off my face. Get off my face!”

Wouldn’t you know it, they scurried to the top of my head. My scalp twitched.  Ignoring Talree’s amused snort, I linked with the kids again.
“We need to teleport to safety.”
I gave them a mental picture of what they should expect.
“You ready?”

They wrapped their legs in my hair.
“Ready.”

Talree’s arms tightened around me, and poof. Another disorienting moment of total darkness, and we appeared on an enormous pile of bones covered in a spongy, fibrous mass.

A mob of armored insects bombarded us. I batted frantically at them as they stung me. “I hate bugs. I hate bugs. I hate bugs.”

The babies chirped happily, and their tiny tongues busily snapped up the insects.

Talree clutched me in a viselike grip and teleported again. We were abruptly standing on the branch of an enormous sausage tree.

Sharp, stabbing pains erupted in my chest. I could actually feel the insects munching on my boobs. I slapped wildly at my chest. “Get ’em off. Get ’em off!”

The babies swarmed over me. I watched in amazement as they effortlessly snagged the flying predators.
I’ll be damned.
Who needed bug spray?

I stripped down and dislodged more of the pests from my clothing. The little guys pounced on them. Tremors shook me as I warily surveyed the area for more hostile critters.

Without warning, torrential rain hit in a claustrophobic wave, washing away the slime coating my body and bringing out hundreds of hungry red leeches.

The planet gave hell a run for its money.

Soulet’s rough voice jarred me from my memories.
“Which one of the babies is Tae?”

“None of them. I found Tae, my very best friend, at the trading post.”

“I thought you were heading for the spaceport?”

“We were, but first we needed credits to buy passage off the planet. The only way to do that was to kill a bunch of Afulas for their skins.”

“I have never heard of these Afulas.”

I flashed her a picture of a twenty-foot-long, crocodile-like creature.
“We killed twenty of those nasty things.”

“An invigorating task.”

“Try terrifying and messy. Once we had skinned the wormy carcasses, we headed for the nearest trading post.”

“Wormy?”

I didn’t even want to discuss the lice-like parasites riddling the Afulas. “Do you need a break? Some find mind melding tiring.”

“I am Askole. We do not tire easily. Please continue,”
Soulet growled.

I focused, allowing more images to flow across my mind…

The trading post was a huge, dilapidated platform on stilts. It creaked ominously in the wind. A variety of watercraft was tied to pillars. The rusted structures were covered with globs of fungus that hung like ragged curtains.

A diverse mixture of alien traders crowded the marketplace. Scaly lizard creatures, a few birdmen, some human-looking guys, and a collection of big bug thingies.

Ewww. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland after she fell down the rabbit hole.

The kids’ sudden hunger caught my attention.
“We eat bugs,”
they chortled eagerly.

Talree warned them,
“Only the little ones.”

A cockroach with way too many legs crawled by. It took everything I had not to give a girly scream and stomp the hell out of it. Someone could make a fortune selling bug zappers here.

I blinked. There was a friggin’ whorehouse in the middle of hell. I guess some things were universal. Females of assorted species strutted under a rusty awning. They wore nothing but metal bands around their necks. Some had one breast while others had four.

My mouth dropped open when one very limber woman leaned down and licked her own pussy. Oh yuck.
“Don’t look, kids.”

Jumping over a frog critter, I quickly followed Talree into a large tent. The interior was stuffed with clothing, colorful vegetables, yellow fruit, jewelry, medical kits, weapons, and snakes in jars. Their cold, dead eyes seemed to follow me.

Damn. The man at the counter was a hillbilly straight out of the Ozarks. His orange hair and beard had some kind of wildlife crawling about in the greasy, matted mess. Ick. He wore a filthy red overall, and his arms were covered in tattoos.

Ah. Wait. Those weren’t tattoos but some kind of mold. Double ick.

The hillbilly’s beady black eyes wandered over me with lecherous intent. He was probably those poor girls’ pimp.

“He tries to touch me, I’ll gut him.”

“I’ll deal with the master trader. You get the supplies we need,”
Talree instructed.

“Yes, sir.”
Normally, I loved to shop, but all I wanted to do was get the hell away from the pervert.

Talree put the still-bleeding skins on the counter. The hillbilly picked one up and licked the blood off.

My stomach roiled. That was just nasty.

Talree broke into some kind of lingo that sounded like a bunch of clucks, chirps, and whistles. I linked with him, and the clucks, chirps, and whistles became words.

“Master Trader, these are from freshly killed Afula. The texture of the leather has not yet changed.”

I headed for the racks of clothing. My uniform shirt and jeans were covered in Afula blood and slime and reeked of sweat. I’d kill for something clean to wear.

My busy kids kept the area clear of wildlife while I sorted through the overalls, looking for anything not dripping with slime. I found one that looked like it would fit me and held it up. It was an ugly mildew green. I scraped the fabric with my nail. Oh, gross. It was covered in alien fungus.

I hung it back up and found another pair. Mustard yellow wasn’t really my color, but at least it wasn’t growing anything toxic. I rooted around until I found an overall that would fit a six-foot-eight, three-hundred-pound predator.

A bunch of jars caught my attention. I wandered over and concentrated. The symbols became words. I did a happy dance. Shampoo! Soap! Insect repellant and a comb. I snagged them and noticed the knives. Hot dang.

My arms piled high with goodies, I staggered toward the fruit section. I picked up what looked like a banana but smelled more like a peach. I added some to the pile. Damn, where was a shopping cart when you needed one?

“Females. Put them in a shop, and they buy everything in sight.”

I peered up at Talree. “If the trader skunked you, I can put some back.”

“Skunked?”

“Cheated you.”

Talree scowled. “Coletti warriors are never cheated.”

I swallow a laugh. “Imagine that. So, I take it you did good?”

“I am Coletti.”

“And not a humble bone in your body.”

He sorted through my pile. “Excellent choices.” He grabbed a knife and slid it into his boot.

“Whoa there. The knives are mine.”

Talree cocked an amused eyebrow. “Are they?”