Page 4 of Alien Viking's Passion

Chen threw herself to the ground beside a jagged boulder, and Aretha followed. There was a vertical crack in the rock, about a foot deep and just wide enough for the two of them to fit into, facing each other.

“Vettir,” Aretha said, her voice sounding thin in her own ears and being drowned out by the screeching monsters. They were bird-like, as big as humans, with dirty gray feathers and wings like bats. Their heads were dominated by round, yellow eyes and sharp, crooked beaks. Aretha remembered Josie talking about them — apparently they were smart enough to use words, one at a time.

“The Shine must be driving them crazy,” Chen seethed between clenched teeth as she turnedaround to kick at the talons that clawed at them from above. “They’re not supposed to be this close to the coast! This is supposed to be thesafeside!”

Aretha tried to squeeze herself further into the crack, but it just wasn’t that deep.

A vette came screeching, going low. It beat its wings furiously to stay in one place as it swiped its talons down in a vicious movement. One claw hit Aretha’s shoulder like a soft punch.

But the vettir immediately started screeching, “Blood! Blood!”

When Aretha touched her hand to the shoulder, she felt the rip in the thin blouse and her hand came back streaked withcrimson. “Son of abitch!”

“You okay?” Chen asked, but there wasn’t much either of them could do.

The vettir were getting daring now, coming closer and closer, some sitting down on the boulders around them and screeching in excitement. “Meat! Meat! Blood! Blood!”

Aretha wanted to say she would be fine, but the cacophony of vettir around them made it impossible to hear anything. And she wasn’t at all sure it was true.

More and more talons came swiping down, more and more vettir came flying from further uphill until the sky was so dark with them that they obscured the stars above.

Aretha and Chen were pinned down — the moment they put their heads out of the narrow crack, they would have their eyes pecked out. Beaks and claws pulled and snagged at their clothes, trying to drag them out. Their blouses were being torn to shreds while still on their bodies.

A sharp beak pecked down at Aretha and hit her collar bone, making her scream from the piercing pain.

Angry and scared tears burned in her eyes. They had to get out of this, but she couldn’t see how. The vettir screeched and screamed as they came closer and closer, smelling of rotten meat and hacking furiously at the girls with beaks and talons.

“We have to run!” Aretha yelled, her throat sore with fear.

“They’ll eat us alive!” Chen yelled back into her ear, then yelped when a vette pecked its curved beak at her arm and flew away with a piece of fabric from her blouse. “But anything is better than this!”

Chen bolted out of the crack, straight into the mass of vettir. Aretha ran after her, wanting to clamp her hands over her ears to keep the horrible screeching out.

The cloud of vettir descended on them, hundreds of flying monsters with razor-sharp talons and beaks like needle-nose pliers. “Blood! Flesh! Murder!”There was triumph in their voices now.

Aretha had run maybe ten paces when she knew that both she and Chen were dead. Their clothing was already hanging around them like loose, ripped rags and the hard beaks were drawing more blood from their exposed bodies.

She knew she was screaming in terror, but she couldn't even hear herself. Chen's mouth was open too, her eyes wild with fear.

A quick shock went through the vettir, and the nightmarish screeching suddenly had a bass note of dissonance. The flying monsters rose like a swarm of flies from a dead rat, and their screeching took on a fearful note as the bass sound got louder, recognizable as a Viking war cry.

“Warrior!”the vettir screeched. “Steel! Death!”

Someone was coming towards them through the cloud of vettir, swinging a big sword, slashing and hacking at the monsters and creating a spray of severed vette heads, talons, feathers and blue, watery blood.

“Are you seeing this?” Chen asked, grabbing Aretha’s arm. “He’s chasing them away all by himself!”

A Viking warrior was making his way towards them, chanting in a deep bass voice as if he was enjoying himself. But now the vettir had realized that the tide had turned and were doing theirbest to get away into the sky. The stragglers had trouble rising without crashing into the upper layers of vettir, and those were easy for the warrior to slash out of the sky.

Finally all the vettir were either dead on the ground or part of the black cloud that was hurrying away up towards the mountaintops.

The Viking grabbed a dead vette from the ground and used it as a rag to clean his sword. Then he replaced the weapon in its scabbard and crossed his massive arms over his chest. His copper-colored beard was braided in the usual way, but no other Viking had their golden hair slicked back like his. The starlight glinted off his silvery horns and made his intricate tattoo glow like frost.

Aretha straightened from her panicked crouch. She was suddenly aware that a lot of her outfit had been ripped off her, and only her thick, wooly skirt was still mostly intact. Above the waist, the pitiful remains of the blouse were hanging from a single thread that she snapped with shaking fingers, tossing the rags away.

The Viking let his penetrating blue gaze rest on her bare chest. “Rarely is the vettir’s unholy cry heard on this side of the mountains,” he rumbled in Garda, the Viking language, both soft and hard at the same time. “One wonders why anyone should wish to draw them here.”

“Thank you,” Aretha said, finally gathering her wits and starting to feel the sting from the spots where the vettir had pierced her skin. “I think you’ve saved our lives. You okay, Chen?”

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