Chapter 14 #2
Those three steps opened a gap and Michelle stumbled, suddenly exposed.
“No!” The word tore from his throat as he fought to get back to her, but bodies pressed in from all sides, his claws painting the air red, but for every feral he dropped, another took its place.
Through the chaos, movement on the ridge above caught his eye.
His blood turned to ice.
A figure stood silhouetted against the stars, and everything he knew about ferals shattered into fragments. It was a female. She stood with an authority that radiated from her stance alone, one hand raised as she directed the assault with precise gestures.
Her eyes found his across the battlefield. Yellow. The same yellow as his.
The shock of recognition, not personal, but something deeper, something in his blood, nearly got him killed. Claws raked across his back, sending fire through his body. He spun and caught his attacker’s head, twisting until vertebrae separated with a wet crack.
But that moment of distraction had been enough.
The attack pattern shifted, the ferals flowing around him like water around a stone and isolating him from the others. He caught glimpses through the press of bodies… Kraath pressed against the canyon wall, Raaze bleeding from a dozen wounds, and Michelle...
She stood alone in a pocket of space, the blade hanging loose in her grip. Blood ran down her face, her chest heaving as she tried to track threats from every direction.
Holy trall. He saw it happening like slow motion, every heartbeat an eternity as the massive feral charged from Michelle’s blind spot. She was looking the wrong way, trying to track a smaller feral circling to her left.
The thing was huge—easily twice his size, its body a mass of scars and mutations, its arms thickened into clubs of muscle and bone. Its claws extended as it ran, each one the length of a combat knife.
Claws that were aimed straight for Michelle’s throat.
“MICHELLE!”
A terrible roar welled up and tore from his throat as his legion exploded through his system, armor flowing down his arms and legs as he moved. The ferals between him and Michelle ceased to exist... he went through them like they were made of paper.
But he was too far away, distance and time working against him and each meter felt endless as the massive feral closed on Michelle. She started to turn, warned by his shout, but her movements were slow, exhausted... human.
The feral’s claws swept toward her throat.
Zeke hit it from the side with every ounce of strength his legion could provide.
The impact shattered his left shoulder, but he drove the creature away from Michelle.
Both of them crashed into the canyon wall hard enough to crack stone, rock dust raining down as they rolled apart, both finding their feet with predatory grace.
Up close, the thing was even more monstrous. Its face had elongated into something between Izaean and animal, too many teeth crowding a jaw that unhinged like a snake’s.
It smiled at him. The expression was too intelligent, too knowing.
They crashed together, and he learned what fighting a nightmare felt like.
His claws tore through flesh, opening wounds that should have been fatal, but the tissue knitted back together, healing faster than he could inflict damage.
The feral’s return strikes were sledgehammer blows that cracked his armor and sent shockwaves through his bones.
He drove his claws through its chest, feeling them puncture organs. The feral laughed and headbutted him hard enough to make his vision spark, its own claws raking across his ribs, parting armor and flesh like it was nothing.
They rolled across the blood-slicked ground, each trying to find the killing hold. He managed to get his hands around its throat, squeezing with strength that could bend steel, but the feral’s neck muscles bulged. Its claws found his sides, punching through to scrape against ribs.
Fire raced through his veins. Not just pain. Poison. Something on those claws that made his muscles seize and spasm. He lost his grip, and the feral threw him back, his body carving a furrow in the ground.
Rolling to his feet, his left arm hung useless as blood ran down his sides where the claws had found flesh. His legion tried to compensate, but the poison interfered, making his healing sluggish.
The feral stood between him and Michelle, that terrible smile still stretching its face. Behind it, he could see her—Raaze had reached her and was trying to pull her back, but she fought against him, trying to get to him.
The understanding landed like a fist in his gut.
He couldn’t win. The math was simple. It healed. He didn’t. But thirty seconds might be enough for Michelle to get away.
The feral charged again. Zeke met it, pouring everything into the clash, his claws finding its eyes, bursting them like grapes. It screamed and caught his throat, lifting him off the ground. He drove his knee into its chest, feeling ribs crack.
They were both dying, just at different speeds. The feral’s eyes were already starting to regenerate, cloudy tissue forming in the empty sockets. Zeke’s vision went gray at the edges as the grip on his throat tightened.
Through the narrowing tunnel of his vision, he found Michelle. She’d broken free from Raaze, was trying to run toward them despite her injured leg, terror widening her eyes, but her jaw was set, her teeth gritted against the pain. The blade was raised like she thought she could help.
No. She’d die trying to save him.
He used the last of his strength to break the feral’s grip, dropping to the ground in a heap. His muscles barely responded, the poison spreading through his system like ice, but his voice still worked, powered by desperation and love and the absolute need to see her live.
“RUN!”