The Silence #2
The water hit the ice-cold, wet stone of the front cave.
The thermal reaction was instant. A loud, aggressive hissing filled the space.
Dense white clouds of hot steam shot upward.
In a fraction of a second, the clear air of the main cave transformed into an impenetrable wall of fog.
The steam reeked of sulfur and wet earth.
Jules coughed as the hot air seared her lungs. Visibility dropped to less than a meter. The entire cave was now one gigantic heat source. No Syndicate infrared sensor would be able to isolate a single signature in here.
Kore emerged from the dense white fog. His dark skin was covered with condensation that glistened in the faint glow of the fungi. He looked like a demon risen straight from a lava lake.
He stopped in front of Jules. The trap was set. But his gaze traveled down her body. The pale skin of the human woman would glow in the jungle, even in the shadows of the cave. Heat signature or not, she needed camouflage. Visual camouflage.
Without a word, Kore knelt. He dug his huge hands into the ice-cold black swamp mud at the edge of the cave lake. He scooped up two handfuls of the thick, stinking mire and straightened.
Jules instinctively stepped back, but Kore stopped her with a stern, demanding growl. “Camouflage,” he rumbled. “Syndicate sees bright. You are bright.”
He didn’t wait for permission. He pressed his left palm, full of cold mud, against her naked shoulder.
Jules gasped softly as the icy mass met her overheated skin.
Kore’s movements weren’t rough, but they were pragmatic.
He smeared the viscous black mud over her shoulders, dragged his rough, claw-tipped fingers across her collarbone, and coated her breasts with the cold mire.
It was a completely different kind of touch from an hour ago. There was nothing sexual about this act, and yet it was the most intimate, possessive act she could imagine. The monster was arming his female for war. He covered her nakedness with the armor of his jungle.
His large hands glided over her stomach, smearing mud over her hips and thighs until her pale skin had nearly vanished beneath the black layer. The dirt stank of decay and dead leaves—perfect olfactory camouflage against the Syndicates’ genetically optimized tracking dogs.
Finally, Kore raised his hand to her face.
His rough thumb, covered with mud, stroked across her forehead, drew a thick black line over her cheekbones and across her lips.
He paused. His palm rested heavily against her cheek.
The golden eyes pierced the dense white sulfur steam swirling around them.
“Queen in the shadows,” he murmured, his gravelly voice thick with unmistakable pride. He brushed a matted strand of hair from her face. “Now: bunker. No sound. No matter what you hear. You don't come out.”
Jules nodded in silence. The lump in her throat was so thick she couldn't form words. She placed her mud-smeared hand over his and pressed it against her cheek for the space of a heartbeat. Then she turned and ran through the damp steam, back into the oppressive blackness of the bunker tunnel.
She threw herself onto the furs in the center of the small chamber. The darkness swallowed her instantly. Through the tunnel, she could see only an impenetrable wall of white sulfurous steam and the constant, restless flicker of blue light filtering through the waterfall.
Kore had vanished. The king of the jungle had positioned himself in the fog, ready to tear apart anyone who blundered into his trap.
The bunker's darkness swallowed all sense of time.
Hours bled away. Jules lay in the furs, her back pressed against the cold stone wall, exhaustion heavy as lead in her bones.
The adrenaline rush of the claiming had ebbed, leaving a throbbing ache in every muscle fiber. Kore didn't move. He kept watch.
Then, sometime in the deepest blackness of night, the jungle noise changed. The cacophony of insects, birds, and rustling branches went silent.
A rhythmic vibration traveled through the stone beneath Jules's hands. Not Kore's purr. A mechanical tremor. A pounding rhythm that made the rocks quake. At the same time, a sharp draft blew through the waterfall. Ozone, burned fuel, oiled steel. The stench hit her like a fist.
The scout drones had been only the vanguard. The destroyed tracker had done its job. An army was marching on the cave. Heavy infantry. Syndicate warlords. Flesh traders with electric shackles.
The tremor gnawed through the mountain's foundation. Heavy equipment. Exoskeletons. Troop transports whose repulsor drives spat an unhealthy howl into the air.
Jules lay flat on her stomach in the center of the nest. The scent of Kore—musk and safety—stood in stark contrast to what was brewing outside.
She pressed her palms against the rock to feel the vibration.
Pebbles and dust trickled from the ceiling.
Every metallic footstep tore at the wounds in her mind.
Jules stared through the passage. Kore stood before the waterfall. A monolith of deep violet scales. Shoulders pulled back, hands balled into fists. Every fiber of his body calibrated for destruction.
The light changed. The gentle turquoise of the fungi was extinguished.
Tactical searchlights sliced through the darkness. Harsh, sterile halogen beams pierced the waterfall. The light burned into her retinas. Aggressive. Merciless.
The beam hit Kore. His massive body cast a pitch-black shadow through the tunnel.
The rays bounced off his chest. He didn't blink.
He didn't retreat. The searchlights swept over his armor, the scars, the dried jackal blood, and the remnants of Jules's fluids on his thighs.
He presented the enemy with the unvarnished monstrosity of an alpha warlord.
The roar of rotors swallowed the sound of the waterfall. Drones circled before the entrance. The wind from the artificial propellers whipped the water curtain into the cave—a cold spray that reeked of ozone and weapon steel.
Jules's flight instinct sank claws into her nervous system.
She angled her leg, ready to spring. But the deep pull in her lower abdomen stopped her.
Her inner walls were swollen, throbbing with every movement.
The raw fullness of Kore's knot had stretched her anatomy to its limits.
A drop of his seed slid warm down her thigh.
She stared at the cut on her forearm. The warlord's saliva had sealed the tissue. It throbbed in harmony with her heartbeat.
Stay. Dark.
His command echoed in her skull. The law of the predator. He hadn't marked her to surrender her to civilization. He had claimed her with every fiber of his being. He had pressed her into the safest corner of his territory to crush the enemy.
Jules let her leg sink into the furs. She pulled her knees to her chest and pressed her face against them. She would wait. She had bound her fate to the monster before the waterfall.
Outside, the footsteps died. The metallic click of safeties disengaging on assault rifles, the whir of charging plasma coils. A threat display.
A megaphone crackled. A distorted, metallic voice, dripping with arrogant superiority.
“Target coordinates confirmed. Sector secured.”
Cold crept through her veins. The voice of a flesh trader. Raze's voice.
“Warlord. We have isolated your signature,” the megaphone boomed. The searchlights flickered. “The territory belongs to the Syndicates. The cargo in your cave is property of the Corporation. You are surrounded. There is no tactical exit.”
Kore didn't move. Pillars of muscle standing in the current.
“Surrender the human cargo unharmed. Deactivate your defensive posture,” the voice commanded. “Cooperate, and the Syndicate will leave you your worthless jungle territory. Resist, and we'll burn this rock to its foundations and strip your hide.”
Dead silence. Only the hammering of rotors.
Jules dug her nails into her calves.
Kore raised his head. He didn't waste breath on human language. The warlord bared his fangs. The muscle strands of his chest swelled to bursting.
A roar broke from him that shattered the static cold of the megaphone. A deafening, physical pressure wave of pure, hate-filled violence. Boulders tore loose from the ceiling. Dust exploded. The roar shattered the illusion of human superiority and hurled death at the enemy.
Before the echo faded, Kore launched himself. Kinetic energy catapulted him forward. The violet armor sliced through the white light. He broke through the water curtain like thunder.
He breached the boundary. He left the nest. The darkness swallowed his silhouette. Jules sat alone in the pitch black.
The first shot from a plasma rifle sliced through the night. Then bloody hell broke loose outside.