Excluding that tentacle?Ick.
“Stinkers smell. They’re white, all white like the GLs that we have documented images of. They look like a parasite, or a big, saucepan-sized spider with legs all crooked and sticking up like a bunch of mini Eiffel towers when they run.”
“Interesting.” Just one of her worst nightmares come true then. A madhouse version, a French spider. She almost giggled. Eiffel towers?
“When you see them, you’ll know. Can I have my gun back?”
She hugged the gun in her hand for a last second. “Here.”
The beast man thought they’d send something after her? Oh joy of joys. This was her lucky day.
Her legs chose then to tremble, and she hissed as the pain returned to her side. “Ouch.”
Little Mo.
Day of Observation 1692
Found the female, Cyn. She has joined a male that has wings. Male and therefore one of the GM beast horde with a probability of ninety-six point… something. It lifted one leg andtapped its globular head. Theding, ding, dingresounded in Little Mo’s sound receptors but caused no improvement in the data.
Data corruption was a bitch. Memory was overflowing, and there were possibly physical defects in the core. Too long. Too long following Cyn. It needed to back-up at Big Daddy. Sadly, she was going the wrong way.
It continued observing the pair but more silently, as much as possible. One leg was glitching and the servo-motor was stubbornly refusing to obey some signals.
Little Mo was getting old, and it knew it. Back-up soon, it prayed.
4
Immediately after handinghim back his own gun, she wobbled and almost fell. To be expected. Vargr frowned. Well, this or her being dead. How was she still functioning?
He grabbed her and hefted her into his arms despite her protests and miniature cute scowl. Once he’d hooked his pack over his shoulder, they set off deeper into the quarter. Being super strong had its pluses. Carrying sexy girls might be the numero uno advantage.
Nothing tried to attack them as he lumbered down the hallway. A flock of stinkers would bother him if there were enough of them. He’d seen them stab out throats and eyes, with gusto, then turn in seconds and swarm a new victim. Beasters tended to win but not every time.
The girl grabbing his gun had both pissed him off and impressed him. For a second he’d wondered if she’d shoot him. She hadn’t. She’d stood there with him, waiting to confront an unknown enemy instead of hiding under the mattress, though it was probably safer cowering next to him.
When she’d pressed herself against the length of his back, it had sent a rude shudder all the long way down his spine tohis balls. More than that, she’d managed to convince him of her essential humanity. The call to mate was strong, even more so than pre-GL. In times of stress, men wanted to fuck, so did women. Carry on the species, and so on.
His body recognized her as not just a female but a possible bedmate. He trusted his body more than his brain.
At her birth, she’d been human… same as he.
She could also see in the dark—a change that was abrupt and certainly not human-like.
But, again, she hadn’t shot him. If not for those red scintillating motes in her eyes, she could pass as human, especially if he coached her not to reveal she could see in the dark and swing from buildings by her fingertips after falling several stories.
Cyn might be some new devilry set upon them or she might be a key to something big, if she’d found a weakness in the GLs. His sister had been lost on the top floor since a year after the invasion. He might be able to get her back.
Might. Hoping was better than giving in.
“I like the perks with this service,” she murmured, smiling up at him.
“You flirting with me, babe?”
“Hell no,” she drawled. “And babe? That’s one rung below cutie. Just approving the free perks, is all.”
He kept jogging, walking a while before he replied. “Never said this was free. Before we reach my tribe, I need to fill you in on a few things. This isn’t the old world anymore. Everything is up-ended.”
“Would never have guessed that. Not in a million years. The dead bodies, the absence of the living, the…” She twisted to watch as they passed silent doorway after doorway, the floor decorated with litter—cups, money, clothes, hairbrushes, cellphones. “The leftovers of a fleeing, lurching, mindlesspopulation crushed under your feet like it was nothing. Yep, I was clueless.”
