“Let’s keep moving,” Elonora said, then carefully stepped over the wire. “The colosseum is still about two miles away. I’d like to make it there in one piece, ideally before they decide to attack.”
We followed, careful and quiet.
About five hundred yards later, we all heard branches breaking in the distance. We looked around again through our binoculars. Our range wasn’t as long as Elonora’s, but we’d been able to see some of the creatures before.
Now, however, there were more of them, all darting away in different directions, vanishing behind and up the thick trees. They were all gone in under five seconds.
“What the hell?” Ben muttered, his hand resting on his sheathed sword.
We were all on high alert at this point, and for good reason. Our followers had just vanished. Somehow, I’d felt more at peace knowing where they were. According to Elonora and Dmitri, they were excellent at blending in, which made them difficult, if not impossible to spot if they didn’t want to be seen.
“They wanted us to see them,” Elonora replied, taking a deep breath and exhaling.
She was on edge, and I couldn’t blame her. We didn’t know what we were dealing with, specifically. The creatures didn’t even have much in common with each other, besides their humanoid forms and their exquisite hunting skills. Physically, they differed to a dramatic extent. I, for one, had never seen horns and scales like theirs—not to mention that turquoise fur on the petite female.
“Has anyone noticed how they seem to share certain physical features with the animals we’ve seen in these parts?” I asked.
Dmitri was the first to scoff. “Oh, crap. You’re right. I knew I’d seen those blue scales before on serpents hiding in the bushes. Same size and arrangement along the skin, in fact.”
“And the horns. Thick, long, and slightly curved toward the tips. Those sand-colored antelopes and male deer have something almost identical,” Elonora added.
“And the turquoise fur,” I replied. “We’ve all seen it up close, in fact.”
“The big cats,” Hunter breathed, then nodded slowly. “So, what are we thinking? Cross-species? Hybrids of some sort?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t exclude the possibility. Maybe nature blends species’ features across the board here to give them all an equal fighting chance.”
“But the scent is definitely the same I picked up from the cave pods,” Hunter said. “I’m 100 percent sure they came from there.”
“So, what? Derek and the others accidentally woke them up, and now they’re reclaiming their land?” Rose asked.
“It makes sense, if you think about it. Maybe they saw Derek and his group, and then they saw us and thought we were here to take their lands away,” Zeriel suggested. “They must be dazed after coming out of those pods.”
“The upside so far is that they’re not attacking,” Ridan chimed in. “They’re fast, obviously, but they’re not like those weird flashes. They might be completely unrelated and simply curious about us.”
Elonora cleared her throat, then shook her head slowly. “Is anyone else tired of floating all these theories around with zero facts on our side, or is it just me?”
Rose chuckled softly. “It’s not just you, Lenny, trust me.”
A loud crack made us all freeze. It was swiftly followed by heavy thumps—the kind a sturdy creature makes when it lands on the ground. We immediately turned around. My heart jumped into my throat. My blood rushed, heating my entire body up in an instant.
The six creatures we’d seen first had reached us. They’d come down from the trees, and they were joined by the other three that Dmitri had spotted afterward. Nine in total, each one stranger than the last.
They were well built, wearing leaves and animal furs to cover their own natural features. They were definitely a mix of humanoid and endemic fauna. I recognized the three males with horns coming out of their shoulders and foreheads, the couple with metallic blue snakeskin, and the smaller female with turquoise fur. The other three were equally weird, with a combination of tanned, normal skin, and large swaths of thick, almost stone-like hide in shades of black and dark green.
Their eyes were the only facial features we could see through their coconut-shell masks. However, their intentions became clear when they all revealed their long, sharp claws, five for each hand.
They were out for blood.
Vesta
“We need to keep a low profile,” Rose hissed, just as one of the creatures lunged at her.
They were horrifyingly fast, dashing around and past us like lightning. They hadn’t shown us all of their cards earlier, for sure.
“Yeah, we can’t make too much noise while fighting for our lives!” Dmitri scoffed.
Our swords left their sheaths with metallic screeches. I flicked my lighter open and launched the first fireball at the turquoise-furred female. She dodged it, then came around and tried to slash me with her claws. I fired another shot. The flames missed her by inches, but it gave me the split second I needed to swerve to her side and cut her with my long knife.
I drew blood. Crimson and thick, just like ours.
“If they can bleed, they can die,” I muttered, then went in for the final blow.
She had no intention of sparing me, so why should I be mindful of her right to live?
I moved around and threw a third fireball at her. She yelped from the pain as the flames swallowed her left side. However, she was relentless. Even with a burning arm and her skin sizzling, she still came at me again, her long claws extended and eager to rip my throat out.
Zeriel cut in, moving impressively fast—just not as fast as her. Still, his intervention took her by surprise, and so did his sword. A large gash opened up on her furry abdomen. Zeriel didn’t give her the chance to hit back, though. He cut her down with a diagonal hit. Her body hit the ground with a thump, and blood pooled beneath her.
“If they can bleed, they can die,” Zeriel repeated after me, grinning as he took on another creature, this time one of the reptilians.
I quickly glanced around and observed the carnage. These creatures nearly flashed by us, causing drafts to brush against our faces as they moved. They didn’t carry weapons, but their claws were deadly enough on their own.
The fellows with the horns were twice as dangerous, as they chose our strongest males to fight with and repeatedly tried to ram into them, head and shoulders first. Ridan, Dmitri, and Hunter had their work cut out for them, while Rose and Elonora battled the reptilians. Nevis, Kailani, and I were left with the thick-skinned trio, while Ben and Zeriel moved to assist the team wherever needed. Technically speaking, we outnumbered them, but they were too fast and vicious for that to matter in any way. The thick-skins didn’t shy away from close combat, either.
We had to dodge their claws and shift left and right, trying to find a weak spot—at first glance, there weren’t any!
But I did catch some of their moves. They went in for a vicious attack, then quickly withdrew on the defensive, darted around, and attacked again. They never hit from the same angle twice in a row. It made them difficult to follow, but not impossible.
Dmitri growled from the pain as one of the horned creatures took him head on. His forehead horn pierced Dmitri’s shoulder, but the young wolf did the unthinkable and grabbed the guy’s shoulder horns in the process. He then snapped them clean off. Blood spurted out as the creature wailed and quickly withdrew, dazed by what sounded like agonizing pain.
Hunter cut the horned guy’s head off, leaving Ridan with the other two for a couple of seconds while he checked on Dmitri, who’d fallen to one knee and was holding his injured shoulder.
“I’m fine! Get the others!” Dmitri snapped.
Hunter nodded, then dove back in to assist Ridan with the two remaining horned males. Another thump made me turn my head. Elonora and Rose had managed to take down one of the reptilians in the first group, and the other was itching to pay them back in kind.
“Man, I w
ould love to just dragon the crap out of these guys!” Ridan muttered as he dodged another ram attack, then spat a thin, well-targeted column of fire. The horned creatures moved too fast, though. Barely any of our elemental attacks had an effect on them.
“We don’t want to hurt you!” Rose shouted at one of the thick-skins. “Stop it, please! We mean you no harm!”
“Yeah, I’m not sure we’re making the case for that!” Ben quipped, then used his sword to block another attack.
We were gradually pushed into a tight circle, back to back, as the remaining creatures ganged up and rushed around us, viciously clawing at us. Nevis’s frost finally managed to swallow one of the thick-skins whole, bringing him to a grinding halt for a second, until one of the horned males crashed into him and obliterated the ice, releasing the creature.
“What the hell are these things?!” Nevis snapped, visibly and genuinely exasperated.
Just then, a sharp pain burned through my side. It cut my breath off, and I collapsed. I’d been hit, and I didn’t even see it coming. Kailani tried to grab us all and zap us out of there, but a dart got lodged in her neck. More projectiles followed, and Kailani dropped, completely paralyzed.
Elonora cursed under her breath and put out a barrier, doing her best to protect us. I wanted to help, but my entire body burned from the inside. Only then did I notice the ashen color of Dmitri’s skin. He wasn’t just bleeding out. He’d been poisoned. I glanced down at myself and noticed the same effect, my veins darkening to a creepy shade of dark blue. Kailani had blacked out completely.
“There are more of them in the trees!” Elonora said. “Three of them, shooting these darts!”
Another round of projectiles came in. This time, however, Nevis growled with raw anger and raised a thick wall of Dhaxanian ice around us. My throat burned, and my vision started to blur. I heard Ridan’s spine-tingling roar as he spat fire. I saw the flash of light.
But then, the strangest thing happened. As the remaining horned creatures and thick-skins kept hacking and slashing at the ice wall around us, soon to break through it, and as a third wave of poisoned darts came through, something rushed through the woods, not far from us.
Branches snapped. A creature screamed, then gurgled. Then, a heavy body landed on the ground. It was swiftly followed by two more.
“Something’s out here,” Rose muttered, looking around as she tried to spot the newcomer. “The shooters are down.”
One of the thick-skins was thrown against the ice wall, completely shattering it in the process. It all came down around us, just in time for us to see the thick-skin drop dead, his body mangled and unnaturally twisted.
The other five remaining hostiles stilled, their eyes darting around. I blinked several times, raising my head as I struggled to stay conscious for long enough to see what was happening. Rose was already down on her knees, administering vampire blood and healing paste to Dmitri and Kailani, who were completely out of it.
“I’ll be with you in a second, sweetie,” Rose said to me, her voice trembling.
I looked behind her and froze. A dark shadow shot from behind a tree and rammed into one of the horned creatures. Whatever it was, it growled and tore the fiend apart—in a most literal sense. One of his limbs flew past my head. Blood sprayed all over us, dousing us in dark scarlet.
The other four creatures scrambled backward as the shadow vanished behind the trees to our left, breaking more branches in the process. They ran off, hot-heeled and desperate to get out of the shadow’s reach, from what I could tell.
“I know we ask this a lot these days, but what the hell was that?” Hunter muttered, his eyes wide with shock.
Rose cursed under her breath, then started shaking Dmitri, who didn’t look any better. In fact, he was getting bluer with every second that passed. It didn’t make me feel safe, either. Whatever had poisoned him was definitely in my system, too, albeit in a smaller quantity, since I was still conscious.
“Something is wrong,” Rose said, then started applying pressure to Dmitri’s chest. She was trying to resuscitate him. “The vampire blood isn’t working. The healing potion isn’t working. I’m losing him!”
Ben dropped to his knees next to Kailani, who looked just as bad, if not worse. He checked her pulse and went pale. “I can’t…” he murmured, then lowered his head to listen to her breath. “She’s not breathing.”
Elonora was stunned and holding her side. She, too, was losing her natural color.
“Poison,” I mumbled, drawing their attention. “I think… I think their claws… their horns… I think they’re poisoned.”
Hunter was livid, kneeling next to Kailani. Nevis caught Elonora in his arms, just as her knees gave out. The look of despair and helplessness on Rose’s and Ben’s faces tore my heart out. But there wasn’t anything I could do. The image before me was getting darker.
I was going to pass out soon enough. Then, blackness would swallow me whole.
I heard footsteps. Something came at us. I heard Hunter growl and Zeriel’s sword come out again.
“Put your weapons down!” a female said. I didn’t recognize her voice.
“Who are you?” Rose shot back, her tone sharp and firm.
“I’m the one who’s going to stop your friends from dying, if you put your weapons away and let me do my thing!” the female replied.
A couple of seconds passed in silence, until Rose relented. “Let her through,” she said.
I felt a sting in my neck.
“Ouch,” I mumbled, then felt a chill run through my veins.
My eyes peeled open. I could see the tree crowns above me. My breathing was normal again. My consciousness was gradually returning in full. I’d definitely been poisoned, but, whatever it was that had been injected into my bloodstream, it did a good job of counteracting the effect.
I managed to get up and actually see the female I’d heard and whom I assumed had injected me. She was about my height, slender, and clad in a skirt and top made of woven weeds. Her skin was light brown, her eyes were big and yellow, serpent-like, and her hair was long and black. She looked strange. Patches of pale green scales covered her arms and shoulders, and her fangs were long and sharp, making her speech sound a little different.
She used a metal syringe to draw a blue liquid from a tin flask, then injected Dmitri with it. The effects were almost immediate, as the rest of us watched in awe. She moved on to Kailani, repeating the procedure, then Elonora, who was still breathing—but barely.
I could feel the strength returning to my limbs. My knees were no longer shaky, and my heart rate was even and moderate. The female creature looked around, measuring each of us from head to toe.
“Did anyone else get cut or stabbed just now?” she asked.
Rose, Ben, Zeriel, Nevis, Hunter, and Ridan checked themselves. Hunter frowned, showing her a gash on his right shoulder. She nodded, then filled her syringe again and moved to inject him. Hunter instantly stepped back and gave her a warning growl.
“What’s in that syringe?” he asked.
Dmitri wheezed as he took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Kailani followed shortly after him, coughing. Rose turned her onto one side to make it easier if she needed to retch—which she did, as did Dmitri. I got queasy, too, but nowhere near as badly as those two.
Elonora sat up, with Nevis sitting next to her and looking almost sick with worry.
“It’ll stop you from dying,” the female replied.
“Hunter, let her treat you,” Rose advised him. “It’s helped them, for sure,” she added, nodding at Dmitri, Kailani, Elonora, and me.
Hunter grumbled something, then motioned for the female to inject him. She stuck the needle deep in his arm. He hissed from the pain, but she didn’t even squirm. Whatever she was, we didn’t scare her at all. I noticed the pale green fin on her bare lower back, as well as the smaller ones on her calves and forearms. That’s new.
“There. Now you all get to live another day,” the creature said,
giving us a faint smirk.
“Who are you?” I asked. “What are you?”
“Kallisto,” she replied bluntly. “What are you?”
Dmitri groaned, finally done throwing up. Rose gave him water from a flask, then used some of it to wet a cloth from her supply bag and wipe his face with it.
“Not sure if you noticed, but we’re not from around here,” the young wolf managed.
I stifled a grin, thankful to see his high-spirited mood was back, as well. Kallisto cocked her head to the side, narrowing her eyes at him.
“Yes, it didn’t take a genius to figure that one out,” she said. “But what are you? What are you doing here?”
“I think we asked you first,” Rose retorted, her brow furrowed.
Kallisto raised an eyebrow in response, somewhat irritated. “This is my home.”
“What, the jungle?” Ben asked.
“Sort of,” Kallisto replied. Her vagueness was starting to get on my nerves. We had enough unanswered questions already, and I was in no mood for guessing.
“Listen, sister,” I shot back, pointing a finger at her. “Thanks for helping us out and whatnot, but we’ve been dealing with enough crap over the past twenty-four hours already. None of us are in the mood for any cryptic crap or half-truths, so do us a favor and tell us what you are and what you’re doing here.”
Kallisto was surprised by my response, but she didn’t seem angered.
Elonora was staring at her, until Nevis gently squeezed her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he murmured, giving her a concerned look.
Elonora nodded softly, then stilled and turned to the other side to retch. “Oh, man… It’s like my insides are burning,” she groaned between coughs.
“It’s the venom leaving your body,” Kallisto replied. “It’s never a pleasant experience.”
“You know what those creatures are?” I asked.
Kallisto shifted her focus back to me, while Nevis borrowed a cloth from Rose’s supplies and used it to clean Elonora’s face.