Page 22 of The Naga Scavenger’s Precious Mate

With horror, my eyes landed on where the machine was now hovering. Her thighs. A burning scent filled the air, the thinnest of tendrils of smoke wafting from her leg coverings. I had not caught the smell yet, mistaking it for the fire the Sleara wanted to belch into the air to protect my mate. He was going to try and make a tail out of her legs! And she wasn’t just pale, there were shimmering spots, white glossy scales, that covered her cheeks and her hands.

I raised my trident before I could think better of the action, certain that I had to stop that machine, right now. The weapon flew from my fingers, hurling through the air with a whirring noise as it spun. It struck the machine above my mate and sparks rained down around her. I was already moving, throwing myself at the table and yanking her from the metal plane and into my arms. “Farah! Farah? Wake up my sweet, precious female…” She did not respond, but the revenant roared, the sound matched by a high screeching noise that burned my ears.

Disoriented when sound cut out, I lost my balance and stumbled. The whole world sea-sawed around me, I could not figure out how to stay upright without dropping my female. Lowering myself to the ground, I coiled across the floor as fast as I could while holding her cradled against me. A Naga could move through the grass unseen that way, a useful hunting tactic any good hunter applied on a regular basis. There was nothing stealthy or graceful about this ground slither, I bumped into pipes and vats in my haste. My world spinning, and still, I could not hear anything but a rushing in my ears, much like the world sounded when deep underwater.

“Zeidon?” Farah’s voice was the first thing that pierced that strange fog. It was the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard, her soft voice, so melodic and pure. I clutched her tighter to me and curled my back against a vat of some strange-smelling liquid for cover. Darting my head left and right, I searched for the damn revenant but could not locate him.

“Farah,” I husked at my female, “I was so scared for you. I am never letting you go! Never.” It was not a thing a male should say to his mate, it was the kind of thing that could get a male sent on trading missions for a year. A Water Weaver Naga was fiercely independent, she would balk at being claimed in such a way. It was a desire each mated male battled every day of his life, but Vera said humans were not the same. That I needed to forget all I knew.

Her arms raised and curled around my neck, a shudder wracking her body. “I was so scared he killed you! Zeidon, you had better make good on that promise. I don’t ever want to let you go either.” Her words were music, they were everything I had ever dreamed of. Vera was right, humans wanted very different things from their male. Now was not the time for this digging I was supposed to do, I had a revenant to kill first, but soon.

“I am tough to kill,” I assured my mate, but right now the world was still spinning. Shadows danced long and vivid, the colorful vats of liquid, the pipes, it all combined into a nightmarish landscape. My eyes were only willing to focus on the pale roundness of my mate, taking in with perfect clarity the opalescent scales that dotted her cheekbones like a fine mist. It was beautiful, I could not deny that, but it shouldn’t be. That revenant had done that to her, it had tried to change her. None of it made any sense.

“Fine,” a dark voice hissed from somewhere to my left. “I need two specimens anyway. You will do too. A male and a female. A mated pair even!” The revenant cackled with delight, and Buzz and Srazz growled in anger. It sounded closer with each word it spoke, gaining on our position and I needed to move.

“Ah, fudge,” Farah said, “It’s not an improvement to know what he’s saying. He sounds utterly mad…” He did, it did. A madman with a mission, and he was after both of us now. I twisted my head and peered through the bright lights and dancing shadows at the tunnel passage I’d arrived through. The door was closed now, and the revenant was nowhere to be seen.

I estimated the best path, how much time it would take me to get us through that door, and which distractions I could pull when it came after us. Then I raised myself on my tail, and with Farah tucked close to my chest, made my dash. The screech that shivered through the air struck me just as hard as the first time, harder even. I felt blood drip from my ears, my senses spun as I lost my balance, dizziness striking.

We collided with the medical table and the still-smoking medical machine. With an arm, I clung to the end of my trident where it stuck out of the broken trunk, as I fought the rising nausea. I had to push forward, I had to keep us moving. Farah’s lips moved as she spoke, but I could not hear her speak. I knew she urged me on.

I struck the door with my shoulder and pain reverberated through my body, each cut and wound making its presence loud and clear. Farah helped by reaching over my shoulder and yanking on cables inside a broken access panel, it was a good plan but it wasn’t going fast enough. I put her down and turned to hover protectively in front of her, searching the room for my opponent. I could not hear him or see him, and the vats with their strange chemical smells overwhelmed my spinning senses.

Then I spotted him, his white arm and shoulder sliding out from behind a vat. He touched something on a nearby table and the lights dimmed. Srazz charged and retreated, posturing and growling though I could not hear him. Buzz fluttered around my head and belched smoke and little bursts of fire that the revenant ignored.

My gut twisted and I knew something was off. If only my hearing would come back, my equilibrium, but the world still tilted drunkenly on its axis all around me. The revenant was doing something to the machines that were housed inside the table he hovered over. If I had my trident, I would toss it again, to stop him from whatever he was doing.

Farah’s voice was the first sound that sifted through my damaged hearing, again. “Got it!” she yelled triumphantly, and I felt the rush of cool air as the door whooshed open. I went to pick her up, my injuries screaming, my balance still off, but good enough. The revenant’s tail came out of nowhere, twisting from behind the vat, the tip disjointed, broken.

The dart that struck me quivered as it hit my chest, I did not feel pain, just a deep sense of failure as darkness claimed me.

Chapter 16

Farah

I guess I should consider myself lucky. I wasn’t entirely sure if this counted as luck or not, but I wanted to think so. It was better than the alternatives. Once again I’d survived, alive, and even completely unharmed, if you didn’t count the weird scales that covered some parts of my body like little freckles.

We were locked up in one of those tiny recovery rooms, or maybe they were supposed to be hospital rooms or cells. I was lucky because I wasn’t alone. Zeidon lay sprawled across most of the nest, his chest rising and falling steadily as he slept. It felt selfish to be glad that he was now a captive with me, but I was infinitely relieved that I wasn’t alone. That I wasn’t alone, and that he was alive.

Srazz made a rumbling noise and finally gave up his sentinel post in front of the door to wander my way and settle his head in my lap. “I know,” I said to him, “This sucks. But at least we’ve got each other, right?” I scratched him behind his soft round ears and listened to the purring noise he made, then giggled when that made Buzz jealous enough to start butting my other hand for his own pets.

Zeidon had gone down like a ton of bricks when the creepy robot hit him with some kind of stun dart. The purple fuzzy end that had suddenly sprouted from his green, bandage-covered chest was a little too much like those tranquilizers darts zookeepers used. I could have bolted then, raced up that tunnel, and abandoned my friend, but I hadn’t. I’d stood my ground and cursed that damn robot to hell and back.

At first, it had seemed like I hadn’t existed to that thing, he’d just grabbed Zeidon from the floor and hauled him to a nearby functioning healing machine. The last one he’d tried to use on me was still smoking from where Zeidon’s trident stuck out of it. It had felt like I was nothing more than an annoying fly buzzing around him while he placed Zeidon beneath the machine and started ripping bandages from his body.

When he suddenly lunged for me and slapped my hand against Zeidon’s hip I’d nearly had a heart attack. It had made Srazz attack the machine’s tail, gnawing on the tip and growling like a rabid dog and I’d feared the small black and white animal would suffer the consequences. “You are his mate,” the robot said to me, ignoring the animal hanging from his tail. “Once you are both healed, you will be the first members of my new Clan. You will breed the perfect Naga to repopulate this planet. You will live in the hallowed halls of Ahoshaga, and rule under my guidance.”

“His mate,” I said out loud to no one in particular, then glanced guiltily at where Zeidon lay sleeping. It was very tempting to crawl into that nest with him and just cuddle up and pretend none of this was happening. The robot had known exactly what it meant when Zeidon’s scales glowed at my touch. Which made me feel all strange inside, a little freaked out, a little dirty even.

That robot was twisting what was between Zeidon and me into something evil, something foul he wanted to use for his own nefarious purposes. At least he didn’t want us dead, that was the lucky part again. Zeidon hadn’t looked good, although his face had been the best thing I’d opened my eyes to. Bandages everywhere, pale green beneath his eyes, and a messy, limp look to his beautiful blue-green hair. I’d seen the slash across his face and one eye, damage to that orb had made his green eye bloodshot. Now he was healed and resting, not even the slightest hint of a scar to mar his emerald scales. I just wished he would wake up.

It felt a bit like a role reversal, where I was the one hovering at his side, waiting for him to wake. It must have been agonizing for him when I’d slept as long as I had after he rescued me. He hadn’t said how long it was, but considering how weak I’d been, I knew it was long. We were lucky to be alive. Luck again. I had enough of that sentiment, I didn’t want to count on luck, I wanted to control my own destiny.

I gave Srazz a last, final scratch behind his fluffy ears, and rose to my feet. Buzz came with me, climbing up my sleeve with his sharp claws and settling on my shoulder with a chirp. My sneakers made scuffing noises on the floor when I went to the nest, reminding me of the old linoleum in my grandma’s kitchen when it was freshly polished.

The nest itself crinkled when I touched the edge, the surface was soft but covered with a plastic-like padding that felt just a tiny bit icky. At least it looked comfortable to rest on for Zeidon, and his breathing was even and slow. At a touch of my finger to his scales, a soft glow spread across his front, and all the way down to the tip of his tail. It looked so pretty and apparently, it meant so much…

Curling against his hip, I lowered my head to his chest and closed my eyes. The steady thump of his heartbeat beneath my ear was soothing and I focused on that. He was alive, I was alive, and we had chemistry beyond my wildest dreams. Now that we were both healed, we’d kick that stupid snake terminator’s skinny ass and bust out of here in no time. All Zeidon had to do was wake up.