Chapter 21 #2
Khawla was slipping in and out of the smoke, in his element with his muted scales, hard to spot and lightning fast. But outnumbered easily four to one, that was not enough.
They needed help, and though Jasmine was doing her best with her arrows, their armor seemed to be blocking most of her strikes.
That meant my sling-thrown rocks were probably not going to matter at all—what could they do against that massive rhino guy anyway?
His skin appeared so thick, nothing could harm him.
Then my eyes landed on the stasis pod over by the far wall, the one I’d lingered over last time.
The Dragnell. My heart skipped a beat as I contemplated that possibility.
Would he help? He hadn’t harmed any of the girls he’d taken under his wing before.
He’d been forceful about making them accept his protection, but he had not hurt them, and he definitely hadn’t demanded things from them in exchange for that protection.
As far as I’d been able to tell, that had come free of charge.
That’s why I’d considered waking him for help before, so why not now?
It might still have been a terrible choice, but I didn’t think it would take much to point him at the Krektar.
He would probably gladly wring a few of their necks.
Feeling like I was possibly doing something dumb, but needing to act rather than do nothing, I started to move—leaping off the pod and forfeiting my vantage point so I could circle around the hold.
I carefully tried to keep track of everyone and tried even harder to spot any sign of Khawla.
A blur there, a falling Krektar the result, then a human stumbling out of the chaos for Jasmine’s safety with a shove of a tail.
He wasn’t just fighting; he was trying to extract anyone still caught in the middle.
I also caught a flash of black and red every now and then, but never enough to really make out what was going on. Thor was moving fast, or trying to move with subterfuge. He was pretty good at staying hidden, just like my Khawla was.
Reaching the pod with the Dragnell wasn’t hard.
The fight was concentrated a little further away; enough distance to be safe.
Nobody seemed to take note of one human rushing around the fight, ducking low to make a smaller target.
Then I was up against the side of the pod, peering in through the plexiglass cover to make sure it was the right one.
His snout was pressed to the glass, all that fur covering him making him fill the pod to the brim. Yeah, it was the right pod.
My fingers felt clumsy and stiff as I tucked away my sling and touched the controls.
I checked the fight once more to see how it was going and discovered that one Naga had gone down, sprawled on the ground in limp, unconscious loops.
It wasn’t Khawla, but it could have been.
The rhinoceros dude was standing over that body as if he meant to crush the poor guy with his hammer—except a flying arrow made him turn.
It bounced off his skin, but his attention was focused on Jasmine now. Not good.
“You better be a good guy, beast,” I muttered as I pressed the wake sequence.
It had never seemed as slow as it did now, precious seconds slipping by.
I pressed my back to the pod and readied my sling, the pouch of rocks collected by Nisha and Daois open at my hip.
Maybe I could distract that monster again, the way Jasmine had.
“What is going on, human?” a voice growled abruptly from behind me.
My spine tingled, fear shooting up it as I jerked away in reflex.
A large, furred hand caught me by the arm and halted me in my tracks.
“You’re the bold one, but those little pebbles won’t work on me.
” The Dragnell had risen to a seated position in his pod, alert and up far more quickly than my girls had been.
All that thick black fur covered a frame packed with muscle, and I felt every bit of his strength in the way he held me.
Fangs gleamed ivory in his pointed wolf’s snout, his eyes glowing golden.
He was glaring at me with fury, as if he thought I was up to no good.
It made me feel positively tiny in the weirdest way.
It was like being called into the headmaster’s office or having my boss reprimand me for spending too much time with my patients—not like he was about to snap me in two or bite my head off, but like he’d give me a serious tongue-lashing and that was it.
My voice trembled as I rushed to explain the situation, and his eyes shifted from furious to contemplative, flicking toward the fight to assess it.
We didn’t have time for this, damn it! That rhino was about to squash Jasmine with his hammer.
“I’m helping you! Rescue is here, but there was a surprise attack!
If you don’t help out, they might kill us yet. ”
“Ah,” the Dragnell drawled. “That’s not helping me; you want me to help you.
” He still hadn’t let go of my arm, but he was climbing out of the pod, his long, bushy tail shaking out behind him in broad sweeps.
He hunched forward, still towering over me but sticking his snout in my face.
“You want me to kill the big gray one so he doesn’t hammer your little pink-haired friend into the ground, is that it? ”
I nodded furiously, seeing no point in denying that. He was almost at Jasmine now and had swatted away several of her arrows. She didn’t have long, and I saw no sign of the green Naga, and Khawla was caught up with three Krektar—his eye on me rather than the rhinoceros about to flyswat my friend.
“Okay,” the Dragnell said, “that’s all I needed to know.
” And just like that, he let go of my arm and leaped into the fray.
I saw only a black blur and gleaming teeth, and then he was on top of the rhino.
He’d moved so fast it shouldn’t be possible, and yet, Khawla whipped his tail around in a fatal blow to a Krektar at much the same speed.
I really hoped the Dragnell wasn’t going to make me regret waking him.
He’d definitely saved Jasmine’s bacon, though, I heard her cheering over the fighting sounds, cheering on the Dragnell.
They were clashing hard and fast, but seemed matched in size.
I hadn’t counted on the Dragnell suffering from stasis illness, but I should have.
I’d been weak and a little nauseous right after waking, and he was no different.
When the rhino struck him in the chest with the hammer, he stumbled back into the stacks of stasis pods with a crash. I did not see him get up.
Then the giant bastard turned on me, as if he knew exactly who’d sicced that beast on him.
The Dragnell’s claws had dug deep scratches into his thick gray skin, possibly blinding one beady black eye—and it absolutely infuriated this monster of an alien.
He came charging toward me just as the sounds of the fight began to die down.
Eyes wide, I felt like time slowed down, everything shifting into slow motion.
The smoke was gone, just curling in the last little wisps around ankles and feet.
The purple Naga was still on the floor, possibly dead.
He was surrounded by Krektar bodies. Behind him, I saw the tip of something green, but not enough of it to know if it was the other guy.
Khawla was rising over the bodies of two more dead Krektar, and a third was just slipping off the knife that tipped Thor’s tail.
My brain helpfully crowed about that, so Thor was on our side.
None of that was good enough to save me from the charging giant.
Even without the hammer, he could crush me like a bug.
I swung my sling, a stone striking his face, but it did not even make him blink.
He was going to grab me in a few seconds, and then all would be over.
At least I felt certain that he wouldn’t come out of this alive.
Khawla would avenge me. Poor Khawla, I never told him I loved him, and now he was about to lose another mate.
And then there was a noise—a whimper, a moan—something.
It was too loud in the sudden silence after the violence.
The charging rhinoceros swiveled his head, and then he changed course, yanking Eva from behind a stasis pod and holding her against him, as if her small body could shield him.
Then he roared, but I understood not a single thing of what he spewed out next.