Page 83 of Feast

But she was too caught up in the thrill of battle. Her heart was pounding with excitement and a triple dose of adrenaline was rushing through her veins. She sprinted ahead through the ankle-deep snow.

Ika aimed her rifle as she had seen Thusar do, pointing it at a knot of nith guards. She squeezed the trigger, and the gun bucked in her hands, sending out a three-shot burst that flew way over her target and slammed into the dark walls of the slaughterhouse with three sparking explosions.

“Whoa!”

Apparently this kind of weapon would take a bit of practice.

“Careful with that thing,” Thusar growled.

He had appeared at one side of her and Gunnar was at the other side, bracketing her protectively with their own bodies. But at this point, there was little chance of harm coming to her. The nith were on the retreat.

Her other ukkur charged ahead toward the fray. Muk was yelling and firing his gun wildly. Slaine, of course, would not deign to use such weapons and instead grabbed stones from the ground, which he pitched at the fleeing nith. He managed to kill two nith in this manner, which was two more than Muk hit with his rifle, and Slaine gave a gloating grin.

The charging army of ukkur had reached the entrances of the slaughterhouse now. They were pouring into the building, whooping and hollering as they went. From inside there came the echoes of more gunfire and fighting.

Ika tried to sprint for one of the entrances, but Thusar and Gunnar both held her back.

“Let me go!” Ika shouted. “Rolf is in there!”

“I know,” Thusar said in a low, soothing purr. “But we don’t know the situation in there. It’s too dangerous.”

“Rolf would feel the same way,” Gunnar added.

Although it infuriated her, Ika knew that both ukkur were right. Rolf would be furious at her for charging into a nith slaughterhouse, even if her purpose was to save his life.

But she had to know if he was still alive.

She tried to struggle away from Thusar’s and Gunnar’s grip, but their massive ukkur hands held her tightly.

“Patience,” Thusar said. “If Rolf is in there, the ukkur will free him.”

Unable to escape from the grasp of her protectors, Ika resigned herself to waiting and watching as Muk, Slaine, and some of the others mopped up the remaining nith guards on the outside.

After a few minutes, the sounds of fighting inside the building grew quiet, and other figures began pouring out of the building.

Ika had not thought she could be more surprised than when she had seen that army of ukkur appear on the ridge a few minutes before, but now she realized she was wrong. As she looked at the figures spilling out of the slaughterhouse, her heart jolted with shock and her legs went all wobbly beneath her. She was grateful that Thusar and Gunnar were holding on to support her.

The naked figures coming out of the slaughterhouse were not ukkur.

They were creatures like her, like Ika.

Not exactly like her, perhaps. There were many different shapes and sizes. Different colors and lengths of hair, blond, red, and dark brown. There was a variety of skin tones too, ranging from a paleness that almost blended into the snow to a rich, deep brown and almost every other shade in between.

But they had the same anatomy that Ika did. Lumps on their chests and no stick between their legs.

For her whole life, Ika had thought she was the only one like herself in the whole world.

Now she saw that was not true.

There were hundreds of Ikas. Thousands, in a myriad of shapes and sizes and colors.

“Gods,” she gasped.

Once the strength came back into her legs, Thusar and Gunnar let her go, but they stayed close by her side as she walked forward to get a better look at the creatures.

Some of them were not like her. Some of them did have piss sticks swinging between their legs, though they clearly were not ukkur since they had no tusks and their bodies were smaller and weaker.

But the one thing that all of these creatures had in common was that they were terrified. Ika knew it was for good reason. Though she didn’t know exactly what the inside of the slaughterhouse looked like, she knew it had to be bad, and the smell of death and blood wafting from the entrance turned her stomach.