20. Poppy
POPPY
We’re still holding hands when the sound of a meat grinder echoing through the canopy stops us dead.
It’s a bizarre chorus of wet, snapping jaws, mechanical noise, and a very distinct, very loud stream of Earth obscenities.
I remember that voice. It belongs to Selene, the intense woman from the selection room.
Yeah, I want her on my team, that’s for damn sure.
Vael drops my hand, his wings flaring as he holds his talons aloft. "Stay behind me," he growls, purple glowing in his throat.
“How the hell do you breath fire and live?” I shake my head. “No. You know what? I don’t want to know how that works.”
“Just stay back.”
"Not a chance," I tell him, pulling two of my freshly harvested shark teeth from my pocket. They’re huge, and I grip them like big pointy rocks. If they can slash that bug apart, I wouldn’t want to be hit with one. "Strength in math, remember?"
“I thought it was numbers.”
“Yeah, but I decided strength in math was funnier.”
We burst through a thick wall of strange fuchsia vines and into a wide clearing.
And it. Is. Chaos.
One of the Draegons is in the center of the fray. Pol, I think. A prince? Is that what Selene said?
That night feels like ten years ago.
His thick tail blurs, whipping through the air, smashing into a pack of what looks like an illegal science experiment: six-legged hyena-badgers with glowing green eyes.
Back-to-back with him is Selene. She doesn't have a weapon, but she has a jagged piece of wreckage from a crashed drone, and she is swinging it like a state softball champion.
Yep, definitely want her with us.
"Left! Your other left, you absolute dill weed!" Selene yells, shattering the jaw of a lunging beast with a sickening crunch.
Vael doesn't hesitate. He unleashes an unnecessary but pretty effective roar, making the pack freeze as he launches into them. He catches one of the armored animals mid-air, his talons ripping through its soft underbelly before it can snap at Pol’s flank.
Ew. That’s fucking gross.
I know I told him I can handle myself, but the sheer speed of alien violence is hard to compete with. Still, when a movement catches my eye, I sigh and charge into the clearing, intending to stab a nasty critter creeping up behind Selene.
My execution, however, lacks military grace.
My foot catches on a slick root, and I go flying forward, screaming at the top of my lungs. Perfect. If that weren’t enough, I’ve launch myself directly into the path of three oncoming nasties.
I hit the mud, sliding on my stomach like a penguin, and hurl my two shark teeth straight at the lead beast's face.
One of the sharp teeth sinks directly into its vertical nose-slit.
Ouch. I cringe.
The critter stops.
The two predators behind it stop dead in their tracks, their six legs skittering in the dirt.
They tilt their armored heads, their glowing green eyes blinking in absolute, evolutionary bewilderment.
They have absolutely zero data in their primitive brains for a small human female sliding through mud and throwing shark teeth, and frankly, I don’t blame them.
"Yeah, that's right!" I scramble to my knees, grabbing more shark teeth and throwing them as hard as I can. "Breach of contract! Punitive damages! Get back!"
That microsecond of sheer animal confusion is all the aliens need.
Vael capitalizes on it instantly, his tail slamming down onto the back of one beast, snapping its spine.
Beside him, Pol lunges forward, his jaws snapping shut around the throat of the second.
Selene brings her jagged drone metal down in a brutal arc, crushing the skull of the creature I blinded with the tooth.
Gross. Like seriously gross.
Within seconds, the remaining predators realize I’m a very confusing harbinger of death and scatter into the dark brush.
The clearing goes dead silent, save for our ragged breathing.
“Well. Hi you guys,” I tell Selene and Pol brightly. “Well met or whatever you Draegon say.”
Vael rushes to my side, his hands clamping around my waist to hoist me out of the mud. He scans my body for injuries, his eyes wide with an mixture of terror and awe.
“Got ‘em,” I say shakily. “Told you strength in numbers and math.”
“Math?” Selene echoes. Pol shoots her an amused look, and she grins at him, before her expression smooths out and she looks away.
"Poppy," Vael rasps, his throat smoking. "Your combat strategy is... entirely strange. You are magnificent."
"I call that tactic the element of sharky surprise," I pant, wiping mud out of my cleavage. I need a fucking shower.
"Are you two done flirting?" Selene spits, wiping dark green predator blood from her cheek with the back of her hand. She glares at Pol, who is looking thoroughly pleased with himself. "We need to move. These things hunt in waves."
"Selene, wait,” I take a step toward her. "We want to form a partnership. My friend Lucy’s signal went dark on the comms tablet. We want to make sure she’s okay, then find the rest. We need to pool our assets and—"
A cheerful electronic chime cuts me off from the sky.
Fuck me.
"Plot twist time," Ken’s synthetic voice booms from a hovering drone overhead. "We love a crossover episode, but the network executives, that’s me, by the way, feel that grouping all your Alpha Draegons together ruins the dramatic tension. Let's keep the intergalactic ratings in mind, shall we?"
Before Vael can leap in front of me, a deafening CRACK echoes through the clearing.
A wall of thick glass shoots up directly from the ground, slamming into the place with the force of a small bomb. A shockwave sprays dirt and rock fragments into the air.
Vael curls into me, shielding me from the debris. When the dust finally settles, I nudge my way past him and press my palms flat against the smooth glass.
On the other side, Selene and Pol stare back at us. Pol snarls, his fist slamming uselessly against the thick material, while Selene mouths a string of words I don't need a translator to decode.
There’s enough fuck glitter in there to power a small kindergarten class.
I like her style.
The path behind them begins to shifts, the ground grinding together to force them down an entirely different path.
"Poppy!" Vael’s hooks his arm securely around my waist, pulling me away from the barrier.
The jungle around us begins to groan, the path beneath our feet illuminating with a neon-red glow that points well away from the barrier, and from Lucy. Ken is driving us apart, and we have no choice but to turn away from Pol and Selene.
Damn it.