1
Warbling low in her throat, her red frill in full flare about her tiny, furious face, a female lava-kin stood her ground. Guarded on all sides by male siblings, she was a perfect replica of the corpse outside. A ferocious predator, born to kill.
She lunged, issuing a single, cooing bark that sent the males into five identical coils.
Sickle lurched back, staggering away from the tiny wryms who watched his every hasty movement. Pupils thin slashes of alien spite, theirs was a glare of primal hatred mixed with a dash of hesitation. The fear of juveniles who lacked the confidence to strike.
A burst of embarrassed laughter bubbled up, and, tracked by half a dozen ravenous glares, Sickle allowed himself a moment to breathe. To laugh in the face of all that ravenous loathing—at himself, for though the lava-kin clutchlings would one day be the most fearsome predators in all the great beyond, that day had not come.
Peering down his nose, he towered above the tiny, starving creatures and knew a brief instant of empathy for the things that would make his next meals.
“Sorry,” he whispered, and kicked out a booted foot when the frilled female puffed up her neck and one of the males feinted toward his left. “Not today. Not by you.”
Setting his attention to more pressing concerns, the Omega male turned—his nape aching with the reminder of Balkazar’s claws set deep into his flesh. Balkazar, who’d been infected and had meant to kill Sickle for daring to reach for freedom. For daring to defend himself from rape and a gruesome death.
But defend himself, hehad.
Sickle grinned through the hurt, despite the lingering worry and the fear that he too had been infected as the others had. Pleased by the plump, rounded sense of justice, that he’d gotten vengeance on the war chief who might have killed them both. Balkazar could try as hard as he wished, run as fast as his long, Anhur legs might carry him, and still, he couldn’t escape the gaping maw of fate.
He’d be swallowed by the horde. Either to live within it, or to die beneath it. Just another causality no one would ever think to record.
None but Sickle, who’d been the engineer of Balkazar’s end.
Baring the points of his teeth, Sickle’s grin grew feral as he recalled the moment Balkazar had finally realized himself outmatched. Beaten by a lowly Omega male who wasn’t strong or fast. Who hadn’t been born with the coveted Anhur measurements, a male the Nine had never bothered to bless, but one who’d outsmarted the once great war chief when itmattered.
Sickle had sent an entire horde of infected lost ambling after Balkazar, and he’d done it with a song of spite and loathing burning in his Hathorian heart.
But he didn’t think of the hurt. The fear that he too, was infected. His wounds festering beneath the healing poultice where Balkazar’s claws had marked him. Didn’t think of the prince who’d died to save him or the tiny queen at the bottom of a pit. That dainty,perfectfemale doomed by the virus, chained to a titan who called himself mate.
King of the beyond.
Giaus.
No, Sickle couldn’t think of them. Couldn’t allow his grief to live alongside the addictive flavor of vengeance that lingered on his palate, and so he set them all aside, knowing they too would meet their end in the horde Balkazar would bring to the clearing on red stone. An ancient riverbed where a queen had been born only to die.
The stink of sulfur-born reptiles was distraction enough. A reminder that he’d claimed refuge in a place that appeared abandoned, but wouldn’t stay that way for long. It was too perfect a hole. Defensible with the promise of many exits, cool and dank enough to store food without risking rot. Hidden and discreet.
It was a paradise for the vicious. Those who survived or died by the flames of the Nine, as Sickle himself had never had to do.
Until now.
But he had no tools. Nothing to protect himself from attack, and no way to hunt and fill his larders with enough to last him the winter.
All he had was a satchel of medical supplies that needed replenishing and a belly full of fumes and hatred.
He glanced at the tiny things lurking in his shadow.
The six fledglings would make a decent meal or two, but what if another brood mother moved in to replace the one who’d died so viciously outside?
What if the thing that had been her end—whatever it was—returned to claim this den?
Ears pressed flat to his skull, Sickle bared his teeth. Fists clenched at his sides.
No.
He would not die here. Not after all he’d done. All he’d seen and lost.
Pacing, distracted and trying to ignore the dull ache of his wounds, Sickle shucked his medical pack and scowled into the gloom.
