Chapter 32
Ani
Another bullet ricochets off the sharp cliff as I cling to the steep side.
I lied, I’m barely over the edge, but from the sound of the fighting I know they are trying to be heroic.
I’m about to yell up at them again when the hair on the back of my neck raises, some instinct telling me there is a far worse predator here than the hunters above.
Far worse.
The first thing I hear is the sound. It isn’t just noise. It’s a pressure that rolls through the water and up the cliff, low and aching and enormous. The sound of guns stops.
Then the lake surface erupts.
Something massive breaches—dark, scarred, impossibly large—and from one long arching tentacle a figure is launched into the sky.
A woman, but like one I have never seen, features combined in such an array of colors that it’s hard to make sense of what I’m seeing.
She shoots upward in a clean arc, water streaming off her body, and at the peak of it brilliant blue wings snap open from her back.
They’re wide and luminous, catching the light like stained glass.
The flight is not graceful. She wobbles hard to the left, overcorrects, nearly tips, and then she steadies.
She angles toward the cliff where the hunters have Szhe’ka pinned and starts firing mid-descent. Her aim, unlike her glide, is controlled.
I move back up the small amount I’ve made it down, just enough to see what’s happening, trying to get a glimpse of one of the males.
“Die, you festering idiots!” she screams cheerfully in English, blood spraying from the top of the cliff. She doesn’t hesitate. No warning. No mercy. “I hope you choke on your own—”
She hits the ground in a rough skid, wings flaring to slow herself, then pivots and keeps shooting. There’s nothing hesitant about her, just loud, furious precision.
The enormous creature launches back out of the water. It throws a boulder, knocking two hunters flat. It lets out another thunderous, almost musical call that rattles my bones. My mind interprets it as the creature cheering her on, with a lot of talk about blood.
I scramble back up toward Szhe’ka, desperate to know if he’s still alive.
By the time I get over the lip of the rock, the winged woman is down in a crouch, wings flaring awkwardly behind her as she keeps firing.
Up close she’s worse. Feral grin, swirling yellow eyes bright with reckless delight, blue wing membranes twitching like they’re still figuring out how to be attached to her.
Once all of the hunters stop screaming into disgusting piles, she turns to me, face moving out of that scary mask of glee into a different type of joy.
“I would stay back… uh… Ruby? You probably don’t want all that I’m packing,” she says in a boasting voice, free hand gesturing across her body like I should know what she means.
“Ani,” I mumble, correcting her.
Packing? My eyes dart to her gun, suddenly afraid I completely misread the situation. “No, no… not that kind of… Doesn’t matter. Hi, I’m Kira. That giant drama squid is Wroahk. He’s a complete asshole.”
From the water comes another long, echoing call. “I know when you are speaking of me.”
She throws her head back and answers in the same strange, echoing tones. Not human words, but something that vibrates in my teeth. The ocean answers, somehow, although it is nowhere to be seen.
The tones sharpen. They are absolutely arguing.
“Shut up,” she calls back in whale voice, but with affection in her tone.
“Don’t give them my voice too,” the creature wails.
“Oh, don’t start!” another voice from down in the water adds before switching to English, voice impossibly bright right after a near death situation. “You got the dramatic entrance you wanted, Kira! It looked amazing, but, uh, maybe you need to practice that glide some more?”
Kira huffs, then shakes herself. “Eli, tell Wroahk he needs to help someone across. It looks like Bird-Guy is back, but I don’t think he’s up for a climb… or a swim.”
I try to move toward Szhe’ka, but Kira holds an arm out toward me, taking a step back, but keeping herself between us. “Not unless you want tentacles, Birdie Girl.”
My eyes narrow at the nickname as Eli responds, voice echoing strangely from the water. “Fine. But you’re going to have to take him hunting so I can get some space. He will be completely incorrigible after we add this many to our community.”
“Just have him get Bird-Guy home and we’ll figure it out later,” Kira calls back down.
Eli starts speaking whale, telling the big creature—Wroahk I presume—all about how he isn’t allowed to crush us into pulp.
Another drawn-out note rolls in, offended. My eyes widen as they continue arguing, deals made and remade until suddenly they stop. I turn just in time to see Wroahk surge up the rock shelf, tentacles flying, and Szhe’ka vanishes.
My heart stops.
Then I see him again. Not falling, but caught in writhing tentacles and dragged cleanly into deeper water instead of onto stone. I exhale so hard it hurts.
Kira watches my face and smirks. “So. Have you had sex yet?”
“What?”
“With Bird-Guy. Or the furry one. Or any of the aliens.” She gestures vaguely around like it’s a casual topic. “Important question.”
“That is none of your business.”
“Whoa. Touchy.”
“I am not touchy,” I seethe. “You just—Why would you ask that?”
She lowers her voice like she’s sharing gossip instead of something terrifying. “Because if you haven’t boinked one yet, and you don’t want tentacles or drakonid bonus features, you might want to keep your distance from anyone new. Including me.”
My brain blanks. “Explain.”
“Nope.” She snaps her wings out. “We are not talking about evolutionary biology while armed idiots are still around. Swim first, talk later.”
“Fuck no. That is not how information sharing works,” I yell, the Bitch rising to the surface as things spin out of control. “Especially after a cryptic discussion of sex!”
She points at the water, steel on her face and in her limbs and suddenly the fight leaves me.
The Bitch really is useless, I remind myself.
I move back to the cliff as Azoeul darts over and offers help.
“Yep, get that DNA all over ya. That fur should be fun to try to shave off your legs,” Kira quips.
She hops over the edge, snapping her wings out and making another graceless glide down until she lands sideways in the water below. I seethe the whole way down, not sure how to act around Kira, though I keep my mouth shut so Azoeul doesn’t think I’m complaining about his help.
It’s the only reason I get down in one piece.
Kira is on the lake shore when we get down, dripping wet but composed. “What language for this guy?”
I take a deep breath and switch to Azoeul’s language to introduce them.
“Nice to meet you. Let’s get to our island,” Kira says
Although the woman’s nosiness rubs me the wrong way, she and Azoeul are bonding over their love of weapons not long after we leave the shore.
We swim, my exhaustion weighing me down, but Azoeul is just as adept at swimming as everything else and he stays with me to share his toneless encouragement.
Halfway to the island, I notice someone already bobbing in the surf ahead of us, long yellow hair writhing in the air. She bounces with the waves and starts firing off questions without breathing.
“Your coloring is so beautiful,” she says in the chirping voice of before, making me realize this must be Eli.
“Is that two different eyes that you got? Do they see better or worse? Are you getting wings or just feathers? Is that…”
I stare at her, my mind slow. She does not stop.
“Later, Eli,” Kira barks and Eli stills her mouth, though she keeps bobbing in the water like she is reciting more questions in her head.
Near the shore stands a large purple figure, broad and hunched like he’s trying to make himself smaller. He hovers at the edge of the water, stepping forward, then back, then forward again, clearly wanting to approach but unsure if he should.
Kira grins wickedly at him. “She needs to be isolated so she doesn’t take on your traits, but relax, big guy. You’ll get measurements soon enough.”
He nods, but the movement is stiff, mechanical, like he learned how from watching someone else do it.
I finally get what Kira means about what she’s “packing” and I feel dumb all over again. My mind isn’t working right after all of the insanity. I definitely don’t want tentacles. Or fur.
Fuck.
We hit the shallows and immediately get swarmed by creepy, many-legged creatures pouring over the rocks. They rub against me, braying in the most alarming way.
I yelp and start batting them away. “Absolutely not. I am not turning into a furred spider—”
A calm voice cuts through my panic. A tall, composed, green-glowing male stands farther up the sand, watching with analytical focus.
“You will not acquire traits from them,” he says evenly in accented English. “They are not sapient.”
I freeze mid-swat. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
I slowly lower my hands, ready to try to figure out a place to pat them when the tall male calls them with a whistle and they skitter away as fast as they arrived.
Behind us, the water explodes again.
A familiar woman, sharp-eyed and confident, rides a massive beast straight out of the water like she was born doing it. The creature bounds into the clearing with terrifying grace before she slides off its back and immediately starts giving directions.
It’s Ree.
“We found Ani,” Eli shouts to Ree, her tone gleeful.
“Well done. Now, up the shore,” she says in a guttural language. “Move.”
Everyone moves, staying far away from Azoeul and I.
As we climb the rocks, Ree looks toward the large purple male. “Did you use the sanitizing spray on the isolation camp?”
He nods again, that same unnatural, too-precise dip of his head.
She studies him for half a second, then says, “Good.”