Authors: Marcella Burnard
Enemy Games (45 page)
Impotent rage stood out in the man’s crimson face.
Good.
For all the pain and suffering he’d caused. For V’kyrri’s death. For trying to murder the woman Damen adored.
The blade contacted with Gerriny’s shirt.
A thready plea escaped the man’s lips.
Damen drove the blade into his heart.
CHAPTER 41
“
A
RE you hit?” Jayleia rasped. Her hands landed on his shoulders. “Damen! The blade was poisoned! Are you hit?”
A
RE you hit?” Jayleia rasped. Her hands landed on his shoulders. “Damen! The blade was poisoned! Are you hit?”
“No,” he said. “But he won’t be getting up again.”
“Come on,” she urged. “The Chekydran-hiin are advancing on the nest plain.”
He rose, turned, touched her cheek, heard the queen’s consort humming, and nodded. “Time to keep your promise to protect the queen.”
She looked startled.
He grinned. “I don’t understand how we’re all locked together, you, me, the queen, and her consort. I only know we are.”
Her smile looked wistful as they climbed the ramp.
“Sometimes you don’t get to choose your family?” she asked.
“It chooses you,” he finished for her, smiling in return. “Even when it doesn’t share the same branch of the species divide.”
It took Damen and Pietre less time to clear the ship by heaving mercenaries out the airlock than it took Jay and Raj to round up a pair of anti-grav units.
Dr. Idylle ended their argument over who had failed to stow the units properly the last time by ordering Raj to help Pietre load the sleeping formula into wide dispersion bombs as the com panel chimed.
While Raj was occupied, Jayleia grabbed a couple of stimulant medications from the medi-bay. He’d protest her taking them, but the drugs were no more a danger to her than the forces gathering for an attack. She trotted to the cockpit to bring the atmospherics online.
The com beeped.
She tabbed open the channel. “
Sen Ekir
.”
Sen Ekir
.”
“
Sen Ekir
!” Captain Ari Idylle’s voice rolled across the cockpit, forced good cheer in her voice. “I have an agitated and delusional Ykktyryk mercenary in my brig who swears he and his crew were attacked by a woman falling from the sky. Care to explain?”
Sen Ekir
!” Captain Ari Idylle’s voice rolled across the cockpit, forced good cheer in her voice. “I have an agitated and delusional Ykktyryk mercenary in my brig who swears he and his crew were attacked by a woman falling from the sky. Care to explain?”
Jayleia’s smile grew. “I’d love to,
Dagger
, but I’m late for a war. I gather you teleported him out? Good timing. Thanks. I leave you to our esteemed leader, Dr. Idylle. Sir? Your youngest.”
Dagger
, but I’m late for a war. I gather you teleported him out? Good timing. Thanks. I leave you to our esteemed leader, Dr. Idylle. Sir? Your youngest.”
“Prepare to lift,” Dr. Idylle said, a twinkle in his blue eyes as he looked between Damen and Jay.
“Negative, sir,” Damen said. “Jayleia and I aren’t going with you. We have an alternate means of transportation. We’re needed on the ground. Don’t worry. Your bombs won’t hurt anyone but their intended targets.”
Dr. Idylle blinked as Jayleia joined Damen in the doorway. “I’d hope not. It distresses me to consider what kind of web you’d weave in the process of building yourself a cocoon.”
“I’d worry more about what we’d turn into,” she muttered as they trotted down the ramp.
Damen’s chuckle sounded pained.
The queen and the drone waited beside the
Kawl Fergus
.
Kawl Fergus
.
Jayleia tugged out of Damen’s grasp, rushed to the queen, and gingerly traced the scar on the queen’s throat pouch.
The queen hummed assurance and hooked her claws under Jayleia’s arms.
The drone did the same to Damen.
They flew into the center of a maelstrom of Chekydran-ki soldiers, workers, and nursery attendants fighting Chekydran-hiin.
The drone set Damen on his feet, beside the new queen’s nest chamber.
Jayleia touched down a moment later.
The queen stretched out, lifted her head, and began to sing. The drone fanned his wings. A
chur
arose, resonating across the battlefield.
chur
arose, resonating across the battlefield.
Damen swayed, buffeted by the sleeping song. The queen and her consort were ordering their Chekydran-hiin children into metamorphosis.
Jayleia closed with him and offered him a wry smile. “I love you.”
His blood beat loud in his ears, suffusing him with heat.
“You knew I was planning a bit of revenge, didn’t you?” he teased. “For not telling me everything.”
Jayleia stiffened, but he sensed the thrill rippling along her nerves. “Revenge? Centered on a pair of neural cuffs?”
“How did you guess?”
She scowled like someone trying not to smile. “How much blood do you require to sate your thirst for vengeance?”
A rush of electricity shot through his veins. “It isn’t blood I crave and I will never have my fill of you.”
Her heart swelling at the promise in his tone, she prodded, “Still not safe from you?”
“Never.”
“Good.”
She turned and sprinted to intercept a Chekydran-hiin bearing down on the queen and her consort.
Damen dropped to one knee, shouldered the mercenary rifle he’d brought, and began picking off targets. He wouldn’t shoot to kill, only to disable. If their plan worked, there’d be no need to destroy the Chekydran-hiin.
Jayleia ran into the midst of battle with the drone and queen sharing her brain. She knew where to strike, and how hard, in order to disable her opponents. That was the goal; disable the Chekydran young until the
Sen Ekir
could arrive and force them into metamorphosis.
Sen Ekir
could arrive and force them into metamorphosis.
She had no desire to kill more of the queen’s children than she had to.
From scout reports, Jayleia gathered some of the young had already succumbed to the queen’s song, Chekydran-hiin who’d never left the planet, who were conditioned to their parents’ voices. It wasn’t enough, but at least a few of the innocent ones were safe.
The rumble of approaching atmospherics heartened her as she did a handspring from a soldier’s back to plant her boot right between a Chekydran-hiin’s eye rows. The creature collapsed.
Two more took its place, the pitch of their hum hitching up a notch, their attacks frenzied.
“Damn,” she muttered.
“Damen?” she hollered. “Something’s changed! I can’t hold them!”
“The engines!” he yelled. “They’re interfering with the song.”
She grimaced. They needed the
Sen Ekir
. If there was the remotest chance that her crazy plan might work, they had to take it. She’d sworn to protect the queens and she would. But weariness and pain were her additional enemies now.
Sen Ekir
. If there was the remotest chance that her crazy plan might work, they had to take it. She’d sworn to protect the queens and she would. But weariness and pain were her additional enemies now.
Nearby, a bomb detonated in midair.
She turned to look and frowned. Too far away to assess results.
With stress-heightened senses, Jayleia heard a Chekydran-hiin rush her from behind.
Jay threw her body left. Flinging her feet over her head, she flipped a half a meter away, touching down on the balls of her feet and one hand, knees folding to absorb impact.
The Chekydran missed. It sounded heavy and slow.
Jay rolled, dodging the creature’s kick. She fetched up against the remnants of the queen’s mound and had to use it to boost herself to her feet.
Muscles aching, her body weary, and her thinking increasingly muddled, Jayleia caught sight of Damen. Pride swelled in her breast. And love. She loved him. That was enough. Regardless of whether she lived or died.
She still had promises to keep.
One, she desperately wanted to keep: to live for him.
The Chekydran-hiin closed, and swung one tentacle right after the other.
One caught her chin. Jay saw stars. The other tentacle impacted her chest and swept her over the edge into the queen’s empty cocoon. When she hit bottom, it knocked the breath from her.
Gasping, she crawled for the opening.
A tentacle grabbed her around the waist and flung her out of the hole, and into the dirt. A rib cracked and she found herself blinking at the striped cloud layer.
The chortling, burbling Chekydran-hiin closed for the kill.
A huge matte black chunk of spaceship hull, bristling with guns and communications arrays blocked out the clouds.
A dot fell from the ship, coming directly for her.
She wondered what it was. Rain? The first Chekydran snow?
A burst of alarm rolled Jay away. The broken ribs shifted. Pain exploded through her torso.
A boom sounded above her.
Her adversary slashed with one leg and laid open Jayleia’s arm.
A concussion wave and a spray of odorless liquid pelted her.
Hurt fired up her arm. Training gathered Jayleia in its hands. She mouthed the pain suppression chant in a singsong that followed the queen’s melody.
A hum filled her head.
Damen.
The drone.
The infant queen, singing from her cradle.
Bleeding badly from the cut that had rendered her left arm useless, Jayleia smiled and joined in.
Her pulse steadied, strengthened. Pain receded and energy seeped into her limbs.
Her tormentor screamed in triumph.
Instinct brought Jay’s hands up.
A razor-sharp claw struck, aiming for her face. She caught it.
It sliced deep into her left hand, ripping a cry of anguish from her abused throat. Blood poured down her arm, but she had the creature’s leg. Embedded in the bone of her left thumb.
She wrenched the thing free with her right hand and twisted.
The Chekydran-hiin coughed a ragged protest, fell to its side, and convulsed.
Jayleia frowned.
Another convulsion wracked the insectoid body thrashing in the wyrl-web.
Web.
That was it.
The Chekydran was succumbing to metamorphosis.
She smiled as belated recognition told her she hadn’t recognized it as a ship blocking the clouds from view because it hadn’t been the
Sen Ekir
dropping the dispersion bomb right on top of her.
Sen Ekir
dropping the dispersion bomb right on top of her.
It had been the
Dagger
.
Dagger
.
Ari had come through.
As if from far away, panic and horror murmured through the space inside her mind.
Damen.
The queens.
The drone.
A wounded nursery attendant limped into Jay’s blurring line of sight and shrilled in alarm.
“Come on,” she wanted to say, but couldn’t. “I’m not that bad off.”
Damen fell to his knees beside her, his lips lined white with terror. Sighing, Jayleia closed her eyes, hummed, and welcomed the Swovjiti Healing Trance.
CHAPTER 42
J
AYLEIA came awake, humming, knowing that Damen, the queen, and her consort hadn’t left her nest chamber since the nursery attendants had packed her in healing gel and wyrl-web. She fell silent. Awareness returned, along with memory. War. Blood. Death.
AYLEIA came awake, humming, knowing that Damen, the queen, and her consort hadn’t left her nest chamber since the nursery attendants had packed her in healing gel and wyrl-web. She fell silent. Awareness returned, along with memory. War. Blood. Death.
The light increased. She could guess Damen had sensed her waking and was clearing the web from the top of her shell. She sighed, ridiculously afraid to open her eyes to see the terrible damage that had been done to her body.
A shard of fright stabbed into her system. Her pulse rate rose and she gasped for a breath.
Stop
, she instructed.
, she instructed.
She’d lived through this before. Besides. What sense did it make from a scientific perspective to allow panic to take over her body chemistry when overwhelming evidence indicated she’d been healed so thoroughly she’d hardly bear scars?
Her heart rate slowed. Good. She recalled one of the major tenets of her Temple training. What could be survived could be endured.
She had promises left to keep.
Opening her eyes, she stirred.
The web released her.
“Open it,” she said aloud.
His exultation reached her as he broke the shell and wrenched pieces out of the way.
Her blood quickened and she couldn’t keep the grin from her face.
Damen peered in, wearing a matching smile, and drew a deep breath as if by scenting her he assured himself of her well-being. He grabbed her outstretched hands and pulled her to the surface.
Her mate gathered her into his arms, sank until they were both seated on the ground, and tucked her head beneath his chin.
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