“Shade Stalker,” I hissed furiously. Now wasnotthe time. I’d been looking for a confrontation with them for days, and they’d avoided me. Of course, they would choose to strike at the moment I least wanted to face them—when I had my mate toprotect. This just proved how incredibly clever they were, and how much of us they’d observed before making their move.
“Oh, shit,” was all Frederique said, but it was enough. As if it were a prearranged signal, the pair of Shade Stalkers chose that moment to charge from the trees—massive, black as night, with two pairs of eyes and a ravenous appetite.
Chapter 22
Frederique
I should have remembered that this planet was supposed to be deadly outside the city borders. Shade Stalkers, as it turned out, were nothing like what I expected. This was a pair of them, coming out from beneath the dense undergrowth like wraiths. Uncannily big, they scuttled across the rugged terrain on four legs that ended in hooked talons. Each was flicking a whip-like tail back and forth, and on it, quills quivered—sharp like knives and ready to cut if that tail swung too close.
Four eyes stared at me from each sharply pointed face. The one on the left had faint bioluminescent veins glowing beneath the front plate that covered its wide, heavily muscled chest. They were like massive lizards—dragons, maybe—but at the same time, they had something extremely insect-like. Their armored skin was slick and obsidian black.
The eyes were definitely the scariest part. The upper pair was bigger—sharp and keenly intelligent—while the second pair was smaller and set farther back on the sides of its head. My scientist brain analyzed those features and reached only one conclusion: this creature had vision all the way around. The primary eyes were like those of a hunter, set at the front, while the secondary eyes allowed it a huge range of peripheral vision. A terrible, deadly combination, of that, I had no doubt.
Sin was standing right between the pair, and they towered over us, tall, deadly, terrifying. Jaxin was a little ahead, and he had aimed his massive gun at the bigger one of the deadly pair. Thatlaser cannon could blow up pretty much anything, but could it blow up one of these primordial creatures? Somehow, I doubted it, though I had no clue what made me think that. Just their deadly reputation, I supposed.
“Do not move,” Sin warned in a deep, sinister drawl. It did not help with the feeling of terrible doom that hung over the crash site. I froze, though in his arms, there wasn’t much I could move anyway. He had me tightly in his grip, and his symbiont had encased my body in a protective layer. I tried not to let it worry me, but I could see a smear of inky black along my collarbone. Should we have kept that part away from the rest of Val? It was spreading, growing bigger… but she was not acting like she was hurt now.
Everyone was frozen in place, and that included the sinister pair of obsidian-black creatures that flanked us. “Aren’t these the ones you were here to hunt?” I whispered. Sin dipped his head in a slow nod, but his dark eyes, swirling with silver, remained locked on the threat. He was acting like we were in mortal danger, though Sin had been cockily arrogant about any threat so far.
Now what? This was a standoff with a precarious balance, and nobody seemed willing to make the first move. I got the sense that perhaps the Shade Stalkers didn’t feel like rushing because they knew they had the upper hand. Their four freaky eyes gleamed with malice; they were enjoying every long, drawn-out second. It made my heart pound, my mouth dry. I was helpless and unarmed, useless, if this came to a fight.
Jaxin abruptly broke the hushed silence that had settled over the jungle, save for the hiss of smoke from the downed ship.He roared, his palm slamming loudly against the thick barrel of the massive gun he was carrying in his brawny arms. Sin jerked backward, leaping in a calculated move out from between the two Shade Stalkers, while the pair turned at the sound and lunged toward Jaxin in reflex.
Everything was a bit of a blur after that. My world briefly turned upside down when Sin put me on my feet and pushed me into a crouch behind the metal wing of the small, crashed ship. A loud sound roared through the silence—one that wasn’t from any throat. No, it was the laser that blasted from the barrel of Jaxin’s weapon. I ducked lower on reflex, my eyes struggling to see after the brightness of the blast.
When I blinked some sense into my vision, terrifyingly long seconds later, it was to the sight of chaos. Jaxin’s blast had taken one of the front limbs off the biggest Shade Stalker, but the streaks of gray and smoldering skin across the creature’s thick chest plate indicated it might have turned at the last second to deflect the blow. The other creature crouched where Jaxin had stood, and there was no sign of the shark-like man anywhere. Sin was the one who streaked through the clearing in a blaze of silver. He dodged claws, wildly swiping talons, and the quill-covered tails that whipped with deadly precision through the air.
Somehow, the injured Shade Stalker was still moving, and though enraged, it did not appear hindered by the severed limb. That one was fully focused on my mate and the silver Gracka attacking at his side, but the second one? It had focused its sinister eyes on my hiding spot, and I had a feeling the tables were about to turn.
I cast my eyes about for a weapon, but there was nothing here but twigs and rotting leaves. When I looked back, the scene of the fight had changed again. Sin had somehow gotten on top of the second one, his arms clenched around its sinuous neck, wrenching. The injured one roared and leapt, taking over the charge the smaller one had started, coming right toward me.
This was it, it was all over now. That thing was going to gobble me up in one big bite. I shouted for Sin, though he was too busy fighting for his own life, and raised my arms above my head. Silver flashed as Val’s shape shifted rapidly, forming a shield above me. The predator crashed into it with a loud crash, and the silver dome slammed down over me from the force. A perfect cage: a tiny, shimmering silver dome of protection.
There was no light then, and no sound except for the rapid bursts of my breathing and the pounding of my frantic heart. A scratching sound came, as if the Shade Stalker were trying to get through, followed by a rumbling in the earth beneath me. Oh fuck, was it trying to dig under? I scrambled back, and my body pressed against the silver curve of Val’s protective dome. The silver wall gave way, and I found myself tumbling backward, briefly tangled with Val’s rapidly changing shape.
Everything was different again. The injured Shade Stalker loomed right above me, one claw dug deep into the earth where my protective little bubble had been. Its eyes gleamed with malicious, sharp intelligence and bottomless hunger. Its tail swung around, quills quivering and dripping with some kind of liquid. The bioluminescent veins on the beast’s chest glowed brighter with its excitement.
I had no chance to see where Sin or Jaxin were. I didn’t even have the chance to spot the second Shade Stalker. The claw ripped free from the earth, dirt spewing, and then it rose over me and came back down. I saw gleaming black as I tried to roll out of the way, felt dirt spray into my face as the claw struck right next to my head. It went back up; I scrambled the other way, and down it came again.
Something buzzed past my head, silver and gray, with a glowing blue dot on its spherical body. When the claw came again, it whirled around it, and lasers fired and burned. The Shade Stalker roared; then it chased after the ball that had hurt it, and I managed to get to my feet to run. That’s when I saw the mercenaries coming from beneath the trees. They were magnificent—the most welcome sight I’d ever seen—and they were a little terrifying at the same time.
Clad in black, form-fitting armor, they fired a barrage of laser fire that drove back the Shade Stalker attacking me with a roar. They were all huge, intimidating, and grim-faced. I saw a pair of males with their faces painted like skulls and wild grins on their faces, and high up in a tree, one of those Naga—like the captain—was curled in the branches. He was shooting with a high-powered rifle, each burst striking the Shade Stalker in the face and blinding those four scary, sharp eyes.
With the mercenaries distracting the Shade Stalker, I spun to search for Sin and discovered that he was finishing off the other one. Standing atop the beast’s head, he brought a sharp, silver spike down into its skull. It began to collapse, and he rode the falling beast down to the forest floor. With a feral grin and a roar of fury, he landed, rolled to his feet, and charged towardme. I braced myself, but I did not run, I spread my arms and welcomed his embrace instead.
He caught me with force, pulling me into his arms and running on without pause. Then we were behind the safety of his crewmates, and he skidded to a stop and put me down, his hands sliding along my body in rapid brushes, his eyes roaming over me. “Hurt?” he demanded. I shook my head and did the same to him, but the hard shell of silver Val had covered him with was completely unblemished. “What is this?” he asked when he noticed the spreading smear of black along my shoulder and chest.
“I don’t know, something from the creature…” I pointed vaguely at where the Davidson thing lay, but the Shade Stalker was partially in the way, roaring and moving fast as it fought the mercenaries steadily closing the net around it. They had brought more than just laser guns and flying drones. Their Naga sniper had blinded it, but that did not keep it from having dangerously precise aim with its quill-covered tail and sharp talon.
Then my eyes caught sight of the shape lying on the jungle dirt nearby, and a shocked gasp escaped me. I brushed Sin’s hand aside and ran, skidding to a stop and thudding to my knees beside the lifeless, heavily bleeding body. “No! Jaxin! Do something, Sin!” I said, my hands instinctively coming down over the gaping wound in the center of the huge Rummicaron’s chest. It looked like a talon strike from that beast, and the wrecked shape of the male’s laser cannon lay beside him—mangled silver metal and shattered pieces indicating that it had been between the male and the blow.
He was bleeding so badly that it was seeping through my fingers and out, I couldn’t stop the flow. I turned my gaze on Sin, who was standing next to me, his boots digging into the soft, loamy earth. He had not ducked down to help; he was just standing there, watching with a grim look on his handsome face. “I can’t, sweet mate,” he said, not with that usual bite of sharpness to his tone. “Val can only heal me,” he added.
I shook my head. “No, not true! She healed me too!” She’d healed the cut on my foot, and I was certain she’d taken away my stasis sickness when we’d first met. Sin’s expression did not change; he remained grim, resigned. I did not want to accept that the cannon-toting shark-alien would perish just like that. He’d provided a distraction so bravely, attacked these beasts without fear…
“Then stop the blood loss until the doctor can get here,” I ordered firmly. Sin put his hand on my shoulder, and Val shifted along my skin, her silver-streaked-with-black form sliding down my arms to pool inside the gaping wound. She did a far better job than my hands ever could with a wound that size, but it took a tug from Sin’s hand on my arms to release my tight grip.
I stared at my red-soaked hands, then reached down to the male’s thick, brawny neck to search for a heartbeat. He was bleeding; it stood to reason he had a heart, but could I feel that through his thick skin? There was nothing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Damn it, I should have spent more time studying the strange new species I was encountering in this quadrant.
