The flash of a spear split through his peripherals, and without so much as a whisper of sound, Sinadim landed a mortal blow. “I presume this is what you meant by clean up?”
Giaus could only grin before he found another anchor for his deadly grip. Tossing the almost-corpse at Sinadim’s feet, he moved on to the next.
And the next.
And the next, spinning and whirling, he aimed for bellies and throats. Tore at all that was vulnerable and left it ruined, his wake a river of blood and bits and slippery pits. The footing grew dangerous when he brought both hands down atop a grotesque skull—and broke the first of his claws in bone that had grown brittle with disease.
He lost three more relieving a mutant of its lower jaw—swollen, diseased tongue left wriggling where it dangled, hanging nearly untethered from a sucking maw.
Another claw crumbled when he caught a swinging fist so badly mutated it may as well have been a club.
But when teeth sliced through his right shoulder, Giaus’ roar threatened to split the very wind from the earth.
His mark.
The most precious gift he’d ever been given—where Renegade had left her claim—almost obliterated by the bite of a mindless beast.
He reached back, caught an eye socket with his forefinger, and swapped it for a digit still tipped with a deadly hook. Pressing through anything that squelched, popped, or squirted, he rotated his wrist until he heard a yelp of pain and the beast went rigid. A spasm of muscle and loose bowels were the only hint that it was death’s weight growing heavy on his back.
Delighted by the swift vengeance, Giaus caught a small one by the throat and sacrificed another claw to show his captured pack brothers exactly the sort of monster he’d become…
… and obliterated that windpipe in the heart of a single deadly fist.
Decapitated, still twitching, the corpse fell at his feet in a crimson puddle already inches deep. The severed skull reduced to nothing more than housing for a set of rolling eyeballs and gnashing teeth Giaus held by the splintered edges of a crushed spine.
He was soterriblyfar from finished.
Free hand darting out, Giaus caught another beast by his open, gaping mouth—and shoved that still blinking skull between jaws wrenched unnaturally wide. Leaving it to choke without offering the courtesy to check if it was really dead before he disemboweled six more in rapid succession.
It was then, when the king spilled the belly of another into the ever-widening pool of gore, that he noticed a particular shade of cerulean blue laced with feral gold. Eyes in a face he hated well enough to take notice when their owner darted through the mayhem.
Mutated, but still lucid enough, Balkazar appeared before him. Covered in carnage, reaching not for Giaus, but Sinadim. “’Mpiiince!” the beast moaned, blue eyes darting. Pupils blown wide as they might go. “Sickle—”
Raising one foot, tail standing stiff and tall to offer a measure of counter balance, Giaus kicked him back and turned again. Sending his elbow to crumple one breastplate and another, attention already having moved to the next target. And the one after that. Watching as Sinadim made swift work of any who survived his wrath. He left Renegade’s second mate to deal with his scraps—none of them in any sort of condition to harm the interloper he hated but couldn’t kill.
The last of his claws went with a splintering pain when it was torn free from the root. Lost behind a boney protuberance he hadn’t bothered to inspect before it was rendered unrecognizable in his fist. Pulped where it wasn’t dangling and jagged.
“Giaus!”
Alarm ringing loud enough to capture his attention, the king turned toward the sound.
Sinadim. Spattered in crimson, cheeks sallow, he yanked his spear from a twitching body—and jerked his chin in the opposite direction.
The second wave was upon them.
Older mutants that had survived battles and brutal winters, dense hides littered with scars and protruding bone that had left them little more than lumberous, armored tanks. They were dense creatures all but unable to walk on two feet, relegated to all fours with the weight of their deformations.
A true behemoth trundled through the trees, moving on balled fists, on knuckles that had flattened to something more closely resembling cloven hooves.
Notoriously hard to kill, they were a living shield that would allow smaller, more agile infected to penetrate the sanctuary where Renegade slumbered. Where she could be spirited away while he labored to dig her out.
Giaus sprinted into the mess without a moment’s hesitation. Leaving Sinadim unguarded, he went to his knees still carrying a great speed—sliding through a small ocean of blood, it was as if, just for a moment, he’d been given wings. Horrible, sticky things reeking of iron and bile, his feathers carried him forward on the winds of death. His pinions the very breath of disease.
It was pure Anhur joy.
Laughing, he threw a punch that sailed through the abdomen of a beast and seized a fist full of slippery entrails. Guts that were a length of pulsing blue and purplish rope for which he had a gruesome task in mind.
Heel catching at an outcropping of red stone, Giaus was launched to his feet once more—a trailing length of ribbon sailing in his wake, he leapt onto the back of that boney tank. Careful not to tear his macabre cable, he dragged the poor doomed creature along with him. Serenaded by the dull lowing of chattel in pain.
