Chapter 8
CHAPTER 8
“I know.” Rekosh squeezed the shaft of his spear and clutched Ahmya against him.
He’d known even before he’d heard the kuzahks rushing through the undergrowth behind him, had known the instant he’d seen the first one.
A kuzahk ahead meant a pack of them behind.
Hearts thumping so quickly that he could not discern their individual beats, Rekosh ran. He charged through vegetation, jumped over fallen logs, and scrambled along raised roots. With every segment he crossed, he sensed the kuzahks drawing nearer.
Crackling thunder echoed between the trees, making the air tremble. Huge, heavy raindrops pelted Rekosh’s hide, each coming quicker than the last, each colder than the last. But they could not cool the fire within him, could not diminish his fear and fury.
Ahmya’s breaths were rapid, and he felt her shaking, felt her heart racing.
His mandibles ticked, and his fangs ground together.
Instinct demanded he stop, turn, and fight, demanded he destroy this threat to his mate. Yet it also demanded he run faster and carry Ahmya as far away from this danger as possible.
A kuzahk snarled to his left, just behind him.
Rekosh responded with a snarl of his own. He could see the creature at the corner of his vision. The slits at the end of its snout flared as it scented the air, and its fur glistened with moisture.
Rekosh kicked out with a hind leg, striking the beast’s front shoulder. The kuzahk stumbled, falling back, only for another to dart around Rekosh from the right.
Without slowing, he leapt into the air, drawing his legs up tight. The beast’s jaws snapped just beneath him. Rekosh came down heavily on the other side of the creature, pouring his momentum back into running.
The kuzahks yipped and howled behind him. Much too close behind him.
Ahmya is unharmed. She will remain unharmed. She will be safe.
He repeated those words again and again in his mind, and each repetition lent him a little more speed, a little more strength. But he knew in his hearts it would not be enough.
Vrix were fast. Kuzahks were faster.
More of the creatures entered the edges of his vision, keeping beyond his reach. They understood that they possessed the speed to surround him.
Rekosh pushed himself onward. He had no idea how many segments he’d traveled from their camp, from the spot they’d been foraging, from Kaldarak. No idea where he was. But only Ahmya mattered in that moment.
He scaled a low, rocky rise, and his eyes widened. Less than a body’s length ahead, the ground fell away sharply into a ravine.
Everything within Rekosh seized. His hearts stilled, the breath locked in his lungs, even his blood refused to flow through his veins. He dug the ends of his legs into the ground and threw his weight backward.
“Oh God!” Ahmya’s body tensed around him, her breaths coming quick and ragged.
One foreleg slid over the edge before Rekosh skidded to a halt. Stones, dirt, and leaves tumbled down into the raging waters of the river ten segments below.
He staggered back only a few steps before a kuzahk leapt in front of him. The creature’s fangs caught on Ahmya’s backpack, and it tugged backward, nearly pulling her from Rekosh’s grasp.
Ahmya cried out, nails raking his hide as she struggled to hold on to him.
Fear fanned the flames of his anger. She was not going to be taken from him, and he was not going to lose her, not here, not now, not to this thing. He thrust his spear, striking the creature’s hindquarters with a glancing blow that opened a gash. The kuzahk released its hold and hobbled away with a whimper.
Rekosh hugged Ahmya to his body again.
She stiffened. “Rekosh, look out!”
He turned his head to see a kuzahk on his left pounce.
Releasing his hold on Ahmya with his upper arm, he raised it, using his lower arm to shove her across his chest toward the right. The beast’s jaws clamped on his raised forearm. Pain burst through the limb, swept away by rage as quickly as it had come. He swung his head down at the beast and pierced its skull with his mandibles. When he shook the dead kuzahk off his arm, he barely noticed the blood mingling with the rainwater on his hide.
The other creature before him recovered and lunged again—not for Rekosh, but for Ahmya. He braced his hand on her backside, lifting her higher. She made a startled sound and planted her palms on his shoulder to stabilize herself. The kuzahk’s jaws clacked shut on empty air barely a finger’s breadth from Ahmya.
Rekosh reared back and slammed his forelegs down on the beast. Its claws raked at him as he stomped again and again, mangling flesh and bone.
Ahmya was his . Nothing could have her. Nothing would harm her.
Another beast lunged from the side, the arc of its leap carrying it straight for Ahmya. Rekosh hammered an arm into the creature’s side and heaved. The kuzahk‘s claws opened fresh wounds on his hide before it was flung into the air. It twisted and kicked but could not catch itself before falling over the edge of the ravine.
“Every time,” Rekosh growled in vrix. “Every time we speak, something gets in the way. Something stops us.”
He hissed and staggered forward when something heavy landed on his hindquarters. Hooked claws snagged his hide, latching the kuzahk on. Its hind legs scrabbled for purchase as it dragged itself up. Rekosh snarled.
“No!” Ahmya cried.
More of the beasts rushed in from the sides, swiping claws and biting at Rekosh’s legs. He kicked and swung at them reflexively. All his thoughts, all his focus, went into keeping Ahmya out of their reach. But some part of his mind understood that he was moving dangerously closer to the edge.
The kuzahk on his hindquarters leapt higher, its claws sinking into his shoulder. Ahmya let out a cry and thrust herself away from the creature. Rekosh stumbled forward, desperately clutching at her as the beast’s jaws gnashed beside his head.
He hooked an arm up around its neck, squeezing its throat down on his shoulder. The kuzahk dug its hind claws into his lower back, pushing against his hold. Rekosh spread his mandibles wide, and a deep, pained growl tore out of him.
Those claws were just below his bag. Just below his gift. His muscles bulged, increasing the pressure on the beast’s throat, but its wet fur was allowing it to slip away.
Ahmya’s face was pale, her eyes wide and full of fear, but her hand was steady as she tugged a blackrock knife free from his sash. With a growl of her own—and those flat human teeth bared—she raised the knife over her shoulder and slammed it down into the kuzahk’s skull.
The creature twitched, briefly forcing its claws deeper, before it went limp.
Rekosh met Ahmya’s gaze. Though her eyes remained fearful, there was something solid at their core, something unwavering.
My little flower…
He drew her close to his chest again. She wrapped herself around him, burying her face against his neck. Rekosh roared and hurled the dead beast over his shoulder, knocking back several of its pack.
Using the space he’d created, he swung his spear in a wide arc, forcing the creatures back farther as they avoided the bite of the bloody stone head.
His chest heaved with his strained breaths, and dull pain pulsed across his hide from his wounds, each of which radiated its own warmth.
There were at least five of the creatures still standing, many of them wounded—and most with Rekosh’s blood glistening on their mouths and claws. They’d tasted blood now. They weren’t likely to abandon their hunt, even after the losses suffered by their pack.
The kuzahks bunched their shoulders, bared their fangs, and crept forward.
Rekosh slid his hind legs back, seeking to maintain the distance between himself and the beasts. One leg slipped past the edge of the ridge. The other sank into ground softened by rain, skewing his balance .
A kuzahk darted forward.
Widening his stance, Rekosh met the beast with a thrust of his spear. The weapon plunged into the creature’s throat.
Lightning arced across the gap in the trees overhead. Thunder shook the ground before the light had even faded.
Ahmya made a sound that Rekosh only felt as a faint vibration against his hide. Heat radiated from her skin, in stark contrast to the rain’s chill.
The beast struggled at the end of Rekosh’s spear, pawing at the ground to get closer. He shoved it down with a foreleg.
The world quaked, and the earth beneath his rear legs crumbled.
His insides lurched. He pushed off with his middle legs, but they found no purchase on the collapsing ground.
“ No ,” he rasped. “No, no, no!” Releasing the spear, he clawed at the dirt and stone before him with his free hands and forelegs. He was falling.
They were falling.
The side of the ravine rushed up before him. Mud, dirt, and stone melted away, flowing down the steep canyon wall like runoff from the storm. Ahmya screamed. Rekosh’s claws raked through the debris, and his arms and legs scraped the ravine wall, but there was nothing of which to catch hold.
There was no way to stop the fall.
He wrapped all four arms around Ahmya, cocooning her, and kicked away from the side of the ravine.
“Rekosh,” she said breathlessly.
Not how I hoped to hold her. Not how I hoped to hear her speak my name.
They fell for but a moment, yet that moment stretched on and on like a bolt of silk unraveling into a single thread. The roar of the wind mingled with the drumming of rain, with the hiss of water rushing below and the ragged whispers of shaking leaves and boughs, with the heavy splashes of stone and dirt plunging into the river. The pounding of his hearts lay beneath it all, setting a frantic rhythm.
Rekosh’s back struck the water. Pain burst across his hide, concentrated more intensely on his numerous wounds. The churning river swallowed him, deafening him to all but its fierce flow, and its current snatched control from him. Rekosh tumbled and spun, his limbs striking unseen obstacles. When his left shoulders crashed into a large stone, the strength and pain of the impact forced his arms open.
Ahmya slipped from his grasp.
No!
Somehow, he fought his way to the surface. Somehow, Ahmya made it with him. He heard her suck in air even as he filled his lungs.
“Rekosh!” Ahmya called out. “I’m here!”
Turning, he glimpsed his mate through the water and hair clinging to his face. She was swimming toward him.
Then the river dragged Rekosh back under.
Blinded by the dark water, he fumbled for Ahmya. He felt her grabbing at him, and caught one of her hands, but his hold slipped as the water’s punishing current threatened to tear them apart.
The river dipped, dropping Rekosh into a swirling section that spun him about violently. Ahmya’s hand was ripped out of his grasp.
A cold unlike any Rekosh could ever have imagined flowed out from his chest, colliding with the thrumming heat of his panic to create a sickening storm.
Using all his limbs, he struggled to right himself, again forcing his head above the surface. The river’s roar was so powerful that even the thunder was dull in comparison. Rekosh swept hair and water out of his eyes and searched for any sign of his little mate.
That inner cold deepened, penetrating his bones. Branches, bark, and leaves floated atop the murky, frothing water, but where was Ahmya? He’d had her only a moment ago. He’d had her.
He called out her name. His voice scratched his throat as it came out, but neither that pain nor any other would match his agony if she was?—
She is safe , he told himself.
Rekosh would accept nothing less.
Ahmya splashed up from the murk several segments ahead of him—first her head, that dark hair a tangled mess in her face, and then her arms, moving wildly to keep her upright.
Yet something was dragging her down.
She brought her hands in to clutch the straps of her bag, wrestling with them. The current dragged her under before she could free herself from them.
His hearts stuttered, and he fought to close the distance between them. “Ahmya!”
The backpack bobbed to the surface momentarily, no longer on Ahmya’s back, before vanishing into the murky river.
A single word echoed inside Rekosh, instilled with impossibly volatile emotion.
Please.
Ahmya’s head reemerged, and she gasped for air.
“Ahmya! Here!”
“Rekosh!”
He could barely make out her voice amidst the noise, and yet hearing it fought back some of the cold inside him.
She wiped her black tresses aside, revealing her fearful expression, and turned in place until she was facing him.
They swam toward each other, but the conflicting currents battering their bodies made it a trial to overcome even that short distance. He shifted his course over and over as the water shoved him in one direction and carried her in another, as it sped her along while trying to catch his legs and hindquarters in more of those swirling pools where currents converged. His hearts stopped each time the water pulled Ahmya under, only to resume beating when she came back up coughing.
The ravine walls sped by on either side, with rainwater pouring down them to feed the already swollen river. Branches shook in the wind high above the ridgelines against a dark gray sky.
But Rekosh could only focus on Ahmya. His little flower. The mate he’d yet to claim, the clever, courageous, determined, kind female who he so desired.
Who he so needed.
The threads of fate that had brought them together were tangled and knotted, spanning across the jungle, across worlds, across the stars. He would not allow them to be severed. He would weave those threads around himself and Ahmya, would fashion them into a cocoon. It would be their warmth, their shelter, their shield. Their unbreakable bond.
Drawing in a deep breath, he plunged forward, paddling with all his arms and legs.
The distance between them shrank, first a threadspan, then a hand’s width, then segments at a time. When finally they were near enough, he thrust out a foreleg.
Ahmya grabbed hold of it immediately. Her hands slipped along his slick hide, but she clenched her jaw, turned away from the water splashing into her face, and clutched at his limb until she’d fully taken hold. The instant her arms were secure, Rekosh pulled her toward him.
She clambered into his arms and clung to him with her whole body once again, squeezing tight. Shivers wracked her, and her skin was far cooler than normal.
Rekosh embraced her, smoothing down her hair. “I have you, vi’keishi .”
“I know,” she whispered raggedly. “I know.”
They clung to each other as the river carried them onward and the current spun them about, barely managing to keep their heads above the water. But Rekosh didn’t care about that. He had her in his arms, and that was all that mattered. He could overcome anything else that was thrown at them so long as he had her.
He scanned the sides of the river, narrowing his eyes against the spray kicked up by the rain and churning waters. The ravine walls offered no apparent points of escape; they were steep, rocky, muddy, with signs of recent landslides everywhere.
Kicking his legs and swinging his arms, he fought the river’s incessant downward pull. Fire sizzled through his limbs, igniting countless aches and stings from his wounds, many of which he hadn’t realized he’d suffered.
And the current only gained speed.
Rekosh blinked water from his eyes and stared hard downstream.
Through the gloom and mist, he couldn’t make out the river for much farther ahead. From his perspective, in fact, it seemed to stop abruptly after an upcoming calm patch.
And beyond it he could see…nothing.
“Shaper, unmake me,” he rasped.
“Rekosh, wha—” Ahmya turned her head to follow his gaze with her own and stiffened. “That’s…not what it looks like. Right?”
He was already drawing a thick silk strand from his spinnerets, passing it to his lower hands. “Looks like nothing. It is nothing.”
“Yeah.” Her lower lip trembled with her next inhalation, and she shifted her hips to accommodate him as he wound the strand around her waist. “Nothing.”
Unable to look away from the water’s edge, Rekosh tied the strand off around Ahmya before securing the other end around his own waist, leaving a bit of slack between them .
The closer they came to that edge, the faster the river carried them toward it, and the more tumultuous the waters grew.
He wrapped himself around her again. “Still have you.”
“I know.” She buried her face against his neck. “And I have you.” Her breath was warm on his hide, and her fingers curled into his tousled hair as she tightened her hold on him. The bite of her little nails on his scalp was the sweetest sensation in the world.
Dark masses took shape beyond the water’s edge—the tops of towering trees, thrashing in the storm, made indistinct by the rain and mist.
Rekosh’s insides twisted, drawing tighter than any knot ever could. All the words he’d longed to say were caught within him, trapped, silenced.
His friends would’ve found that the most unbelievable part of this tale.
He tucked his chin over Ahmya’s hair, curling more protectively around her. A few kicks of his legs turned him so he was facing away from the nothingness ahead.
The river carried them over the edge of the world.