Page 40 of Calico Descending

It lunges toward me.

Breath whooshes out of me as I spin on my heel, pushing off the balls of my feet for speed. My feet fly out from beneath me, the shiny floor burns as it passes beneath my body.

I scramble to get away, my nails bending as I scratch them across the smooth surface.

I’m yanked back again, harder, and I roll over onto my back, staring up at the belly of the beast.

“No! No! Please!”

A long pink tongue lashes out, warm and sticky as it glides over my cheek. I dare a peek to find what I presume is it’s sex organ sticking out between its legs, pulsing with its growing length.

Oh, God. No. Please no!

Something crashes, snapping it’s attention just enough for me to scramble from beneath it. I look up to see Valdys falling from the ceiling, before he lands with a hard thud on the floor. Bits of broken glass shatter around him, raining down. He slides on his helmet and charges headfirst toward the creature.

In a battle of shock and awe, I kick myself backward, away from the brawl. The creature lets out a harrowing screech, and swipes at my leg, it’s long nail tearing across my flesh.

I cry out and slap a trembling hand over the gash streaked up my leg, before it’s body is hauled across the room, and it slams into the wall at the opposite side.

Undeterred, it flips to all fours, scampering toward me again, but Valdys steps in its path, hammering his palm into its throat. The creature claws and writhes, its sharp nails slicing his flesh, as Valdys holds it back from me.

Breath shudders through my chest.

I can see the muscles in Valdys’s arms vibrating with exertion, as he wrangles the beast. A claw slashes at his cheek. Another rips a gash in his thigh. Still, he fights to keep it away from me, his jaw taut with determination.

In one swift move, he manages to dig his fingers beneath the mutation’s head, and on the sound of tearing flesh, he rips it away from the creature’s body. It rolls like a ball across the shiny floor, dripping a dark, almost black fluid that streaks behind it, until it comes to a stop at my feet.

Tucking my knees into my chest, I swallow back the scream in my throat, eyes glued to the teeth that could’ve easily torn through my flesh like hot blades slicing through a fig. My body spasms with terror and shock, and it isn’t until the sturdy arms of Valdys slide beneath my legs, lifting me up off the floor, that I divert my attention from the severed head. Like a beast carrying a wounded bird, he draws me to his chest and strides toward the door at the far end.

Arms wrapped around Valdys’s neck, I tuck my face into his chest. A sob tries to break through, but it can’t. I’m exhausted. Weak. Beyond terror.

“Gentlemen.” Doctor Ericsson’s voice breaks through the sound of blood whooshing inside my skull. “I give you, the Alpha Project.”

My body falls lightly against the mattress of the bed in Valdys’s cell. Had any of the guards outside tried to stop him from bringing me in here with him, I’m certain they’d have met the same fate as the now-headless creature. I’m reluctant to release his neck, but I do, and I curl myself into a ball, shivering, as he covers me with a blanket that holds his soothing scent.

The click of the door startles my muscles, and my eyes scan the room for another creature, but the gentle glide of Valdys’s palm sends a rush of calm through me. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”

He removes his helmet and slides down against the wall beside the bed, tipping his head back with a grimace that tells me his wounds hurt as bad as the one on my leg. Instead of tending to his first, he tears a square of fabric from the sheet and leans forward, dabbing it against my leg, and tying it securely around the wound. I reach to tear a piece for him, as well, but he grabs my arm, shaking his head.

“I’m fine. Get some rest. They’ll be in here soon enough with an army.”

“You’re hurt, though.”

“Nothing I haven’t been through before.”

“Thank you … for what you did back there.”

“I had no choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t stand by and watch that thing have its way with you. Cadmus, either, for that matter.”

His words are a brief and welcomed distraction from the visual of the creature’s organ sticking out, and the horror of what it planned to do with it. “But you … you didn’t have any objections. When Doctor Ericsson asked.”

“I knew Cadmus wasn’t stupid enough to touch my female, not while I watched.”

My belly shouldn’t flutter at the sound of him calling me his. I shouldn’t want to know what his hands feel like on my body, either, after having suffered the kind of trauma I’ve suffered, but I do. Whether it’s because of adrenaline, or too many days spent in isolation, I want his hands on me. “Valdys ...”

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