Chapter 17
Felicia
Seeing Levant fight one of those creatures was both terrifying and a little awe-inspiring.
In the shadowed dark of the fishery, I couldn’t see enough to fully track their movements; I just caught flashes.
The spotted fur hide of the massive Duskha reminded me of a hyena, but its growls were like those of a lion.
The sharp hook on its snout was a bit like the beak of an eagle, perfect for tearing flesh and crunching through bone.
It was a terrifying combination, deadly.
Levant was just as lethal, and that somehow caught me by surprise, even if he was extremely buff for a fairly mild-mannered scientist.
There was nothing nerdy or scientist-like about him now.
I saw only the lethal beast beneath the glossy black scales, the razor-sharp fangs he normally hid behind kind or eager smiles, and the claws he kept tucked away when he worked or when he touched me.
He used his massive body in ways I didn’t expect, coiling, writhing, loops of muscle, or the tip of his tail striking like fists.
The fight seemed to last only seconds, and yet it felt like a lifetime too.
The Dushka ended up lifeless beneath him, Levant rising over the creature victorious and definitely savage.
There was a light on in his golden eyes that hinted at the warrior and the wild instincts he normally hid.
Suddenly, I believed wholeheartedly that we’d be able to rescue Auby from that nest, and scare the Dushka away from this place so we could fix it.
I did not count on the one sneaking up from behind.
I did not sense it, hear it, or smell it; there was no warning at all save for the prickle at the back of my neck.
Levant had surged forward, and he was tangling with three more of the beasts, all of them as big as a pony, with massive, thickly furred paws.
We were so close to the nest, I could see Auby’s light flicker frantically.
At that faint prickle of warning, I managed to turn and throw myself back.
I fell into loose sand, my hands sinking and the light being buried.
Plunged into darkness, only disturbed by Auby’s strobe light show, I saw the hooked maw full of sharp teeth only in flashes.
It closed in on me, and I raised the hand with my knife on instinct.
It cut through fur and flesh, but met so much resistance that I knew it was hopeless even as I did it.
“Noooo!” Levant roared, and the beast was flung off me, hurled through the air before it smashed into the wall on my left with a crunch and a thud.
I scrambled to my feet, heart pumping furiously in my chest, with only one thing in mind: get to Auby, and then out of here.
Levant might be strong; he might have fought that first one and made it seem easy, but now I knew better.
The sheer power in the one that had knocked me down had taken my breath away.
I could not let my mate fight a dozen of them.
He might win, but I couldn’t let him take that kind of risk.
Perhaps it was a good thing the darkness hid much of the fight from my eyes.
I could not see how many Levant was fighting, and still he’d known I was in danger and saved me.
Dozens, definitely too many. I slid through the sand, forcing my legs to move faster, and then abruptly I was at the edge of the nest. It had to be the nest; I was certain of it.
It was the only way to describe the strange, burrow-like shape the beasts had created from sand and debris.
A narrow opening made me think the big ones couldn’t even enter it.
Light flashing in ever-slower intervals from the opening assured me Auby was inside.
I’d ducked and crawled through the hole before I could think twice, the light clutched in my left hand, the knife in my right.
My arms trembled, my back ached from the awkward position, and branches scraped against my clothes.
Sand also rained down, stinging and blinding me. Not good.
I found Auby by touch, at least. I hoped that was Auby and not something else.
A warm, fluffy ear, a soft, slightly wet nose.
It blew against my fingers, and the light briefly flashed brighter.
Through streaming eyes, I saw in that brief flare of illumination that we were not alone.
When Levant called it a nest, he was not wrong.
Broken eggshells lay scattered around, their size indicating what had hatched from them had been big.
Fluffy shapes the size of Saint Bernards lay scattered around Auby, silent, staring at me with large eyes and sharp teeth.
Hulking over them was their mother, or at least I assumed that’s what the massive creature was.
Bigger than a pony, that was certain. The nest must have been built around her, because there was no way she could leave through that narrow opening.
She was hunched low, and as I met her eyes, she opened her maw and growled.
Oh fuck, that was bad, and so was her breath.
It smelled of decay, of rotting flesh, and sulfur.
“Easy there,” I murmured. “I’m just going to take this bad food; it’s going to make your, eh…
pups sick if they eat that. It’s all good…
” My voice trailed off. The light ebbed and flared, and when I saw her again, she was closer.
At least in here, the sand wasn’t raining down, and my vision was beginning to clear.
My fingers closed around Auby’s ear; had he been a real calf, I wouldn’t have pulled, but he wasn’t, so I did.
He was heavy, scraping across sand and sticks with awkward bumps.
“Hurry, hurry,” I whispered under my breath like a chant.
Auby didn’t move, perhaps couldn’t, and he seemed unable to vocalize like before as well.
That his flashing lights, the pale blue beaming from his eyes, were fading couldn’t be good either.
Closer now, I slid my hand over his small shoulder, dug deeper into the thick fur there, and pulled again.
I’d dropped my own light, but I still clutched the knife.
The next flash of fading brightness was a pale lavender, the color of Auby’s eyes.
The mother Dushka hunched over her pups, her legs bunched, and then she lunged.
My knife hand swung up on pure instinct.
It caught something, burying much deeper than last time.
Hot liquid spurted over my hand and turned the handle slick.
I could not hold on. Hot breath blasted into my face, and then it was gone.
The moment after the attack stretched like a lifetime.
I scrambled to gather Auby’s body against my chest, awkwardly crawling backward into the passage.
By sheer luck, my hand found the light I’d dropped along the way.
I tumbled out of the nest’s opening with a crunch, some eggshell stuck to my knees.
I rolled onto my back, threw the hand with the light up so I could see, and saw only another maw of teeth and a hook-like beak.
This one was not nearly as big as the mother, but that didn’t matter; those teeth were still deadly.
The beast winced back, and I thought it must have been Levant, with another well-timed blow of his tail.
It wasn’t; it was the light. When another lunged at me from the left, I swung my hand at its face, and it yelped and dropped low, blinking as if I’d blinded it.
An advantage that only lasted a short moment; I made the most of it by lunging to my feet, Auby against my chest, and booking it across the walkway toward the entrance.
“I’ve got him, Levant!” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“I’ve got Auby—get out of there!” A roar was the answer.
My hand waved wildly above my head, aiming the light in random directions.
I saw Levant, still fighting with more Duskha, red blood streaking him.
Leaping over his tail, I kept going, forcing myself to have faith that he’d follow.
He caught up to me when I was almost to the entrance, with the elevator bank and the stairs beyond.
His hands caught me by the waist, hauling me into his arms. I was winded from that sprint, but he seemed barely bothered at all.
“She’s coming,” he warned, and he swung us through the entrance and then around the corner, his back slamming into the wall.
I found myself shoved behind his back next, awkwardly stumbling onto my feet and pinned between metal and muscle.
She’s coming? I didn’t have to ask to know what he meant.
A crashing noise preceded her, my mind conjuring up an image of that weird nest/burrow bursting apart as she lunged outside.
Howling followed that crash, and there was nothing silent or stealthy about a pack of Dushka giving chase.
Paws thudded on metal flooring and sand, the sound of growls and yips echoing in the massive chamber.
I saw the beak come through the doorway, and in that brief moment registered a few things.
My light and Levant’s sigils were enough to see by.
First, my knife was stuck through the bottom jaw of the beast, and blood coated much of her front.
Second, she was even bigger outside the narrow burrow.
Third, she seemed blinded by rage, and that did her in.
The beast threw herself through the doorway without thought, and Levant was ready for her.
His claws reached, knives flashing, and his tail whipped through the air like lightning.
The female Dushka dropped to the ground, dead, paws twitching as if she were still running a few more steps.
Her flanks were coated with white foam, and the pack she’d led into the charge screeched to a stop, milling around her body and licking at both foam and blood.
It would have been sad to see, if not for how terrifyingly close they were.
I feared they’d retaliate by attacking, but they didn’t.
“The males will collect the pups if they are big enough to survive without their mother, and then they’ll flee.
” Levant seemed very certain of that, but I didn’t believe it until they trotted away and left us unharmed.
They did not attack, barely even seeming to notice we were still there at all.
In minutes, silence returned, except for the rapid panting of my breath and the pounding of my heart.
We waited until the last sound of claws against metal had long since faded and my heart rate had almost returned to normal.
Only then did Levant slide away from the wall and let me up.
A chill immediately struck my skin, and goosebumps broke out.
Pinned against his heat, I hadn’t realized how cold it was in there.
“Let me see him,” Levant said, and the husky sound of his voice in that deep silence made me twitch.
It was so sad, like he was bracing himself for the worst. Perhaps he’d smelled what I hadn’t yet, picked up clues even without sight that I couldn’t.
My heart began pounding again, suddenly certain that we’d gotten to Auby too late.
I slowly lowered him away from my chest and revealed Auby’s small, compact frame.
He was light as a feather as I laid him out on the floor between us and raised the bloodstained light I still held so I could see.
Levant lowered himself to the ground, hands already reaching.
Perhaps he meant to obscure the damage from me, just for a moment, but there was too much of it.
A pale white fluid had leaked from the gashes in his realistic hide, and beneath it, very advanced machinery was revealed.
The little bot was not responding now, his lavender eyes closed and no longer lit at intervals.
He seemed dead, or, I should say, powered down, broken.
“Can you fix him?” I asked, because in such a short time, Auby had come to mean as much to me as Levant had.
The thought of losing either was beginning to sound like a nightmare.
To never hear Auby’s factual explanations followed by a sassy commentary, or the clip-clopping of his six hooves…
“I don’t know,” Levant said, but when he lifted his eyes, they were far from bleak; they were determined.
“But I know someone who can. Don’t worry, sweet mate.
We will do right by him.” It was a vow, earnest, filled with conviction and that same affection I felt for the little bot.
If I hadn’t been halfway in love already, I was now. Levant was sweet, caring, and loyal.
I reached up a hand to cup his face, then halted in horror when I realized it was still covered in blood.
Halting, I stared at it, saw his eyes flick to the side, and quickly yanked my fingers back.
“Sorry, that’s disgusting.” The sleeve of my flight suit was also stained with the female Dushka’s blood, but that white liquid that had seeped from Auby was also all over my front.
I was a mess, Auby was a mess, and I wanted my buddy back—far more than I wanted to go back to my ship or to Earth. Well, that said enough, didn’t it?
“You could never be disgusting,” Levant drawled, a hint of a smile on his handsome face.
Somehow, dirty and bloodstained from the fight himself, he still looked handsome to me too.
So I guessed that feeling was mutual. I’d never had real feelings for a guy before, so I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that.
Brushing over the moment, I focused on the things I could deal with.
Like figuring out what our next move was, and how to carefully transport Auby’s immobile body and check that he wasn’t missing any important parts.
Thankfully, Levant seemed to think action was better right now, too.
With the Dushka gone, we could check the fishery more thoroughly, so once Levant had secured Auby’s small body in a leather satchel, we set out to do that.
It felt wrong, strange, to move on when Auby was out, but what else could we do?
Levant’s people depended on these fisheries for food; they had to be fixed.