A blade. Small and wickedly sharp, spinning through the humid air faster than she could track. She got her arm up, barely, and the armor caught most of it.
Not all.
The edge sliced across her side, just below her ribs. A line of fire. More blood, soaking into the bio-suit, and she felt the armor struggling to seal the wound, to staunch the flow, to keep her functioning.
Too much damage. Too fast.
It was back on its feet. Coming at her again. And she was slower now, her movements sluggish, her vision starting to blur at the edges.
She fought anyway.
Every trick she had learned in fourteen years of police work. Every instinct honed in back alleys and interrogation rooms and firefights that never made the official reports. She fought dirty, because this wasn't a sparring match. She fought smart, because she couldn't match its speed or its reach. She fought mean, because she was Serafina Montecristo and she didn't fucking break.
She put another beam through its shoulder. The same shoulder, widening the wound. It screamed again, and there was frustration in the sound now, rage that she hadn't already fallen.
But she was falling.
Her legs were going numb. Blood loss or shock or both. The armor was doing what it could, pumping her full of whatever combat drugs the Majarin had built into it, but it wasn't enough. She could feel herself fading, could feel the darkness creeping in at the edges of her vision.
She went down to one knee.
The alien stopped. Watched her struggle to rise. That too-wide smile stretched across its face again.
"He will find you here," it said. "What's left of you. And he will know that he failed to protect what was his."
Serafina raised her weapon. Her arm was shaking. The veth'kai felt like it weighed a hundred pounds.
She fired.
Missed.
The beam scorched past the alien's head, close enough to singe the grey skin but nothing more. Her aim was gone. Her strength was gone. Everything was going dark and distant and far away.
She tried to stand. Her legs wouldn't cooperate.
The alien walked toward her. Slow now. Savoring it. Claws flexing at its sides, dripping with her blood.
"He chose poorly," it said. "Humans are so fragile."
Serafina's hand found a rock. Fist-sized. Solid. She clutched it like a lifeline, because she didn't have anything else left.
Get up. Get up. Get up.
She couldn't get up.
The alien loomed over her. Raised one clawed hand. The killing blow, aimed at her throat.
Aria. Angelo. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
She thought of Makrath. His name, surfacing unbidden. The sound of her own name in his voice. The weight of him against her, the heat, the promise of a bond she would never get to understand.
Makrath.
She closed her eyes.
The blow didn't come.
The jungle, already silent, seemed to hold its breath. A pressure change in the air. A shift in the quality of the darkness behind her eyelids.
