Page 9 of Protected By the Alien Warmachine

The third fired before I reached him, shouting a warning as he sent a beam of light burning into my shoulder with acrack of superheated air that echoed from the stone walls. The Makers’ crystals distributed the energy, absorbing some into my batteries and spreading the rest out. Enough got through to burn my skin and the muscle beneath, leaving a painful reminder that their primitive weapons weren’t harmless.

The chance for stealth was over. The intruders’ radio channels buzzed with commands at the sound of the shouted warning and laser fire.Good,I thought, sending some of the shooter’s energy back as a blast of hyperwaves carrying a golden dart through the joint connecting his helmet with the rest of his suit.

Civilized weapons may not be deadlier than their primitive counterparts, but theyaremore elegant. His suit contained the blood as he dropped, first to his knees and then on his face.

“Hendrix, report.” The command crackled over the attackers’ open channel. “Hendrix? Miller? Takamoto? Logan?”

“I told you, man, I fucking told you so.” Another voice, full of fear. Smarter than his colleagues, then. “This place is cursed. We shouldn’t be here!”

“Letour, shut it. If you’ve got to panic, don’t do it on an open channel.”

I closed on the source of the transmissions, hoping that killing their leader would cause the rest to retreat. Better to kill them all, but I was alone in this fight, and I couldn’t afford to take chances.

If survivors spread stories about a ‘curse,’ so much the better.

The enemy pulled their group together, slowing their advance. No chance of them slipping past me to attack my mate while I got distracted. Perhaps that feeling of safety made me overconfident. Perhaps I was simply unlucky, but the laser blast that hit me in the side took me by surprise.

An unexpected gap in the wall beside me, all too easy to overlook, gave a human his opening. I had to commend hisreactions and his aim. He only had a moment to make his shot, and he nailed it. I absorbed what I could, storage crystals glowing with energy, but the overspill cut deep.

Hyperwaves pulsing from my hand, I sent a wave of darts in his direction. His defensive reactions were as good as his aim, and my blast struck the wall behind him, golden sand scattering harmlessly. More laser fire came my way, and I ducked into cover to check my wound. Deep, but not life-threatening. I would heal, given time.

The gift of energy was welcome. My batteries thrummed with power, giving me options I’d lacked, and I took advantage of that. Limbs lengthened, claws grew. My mouth stretched forward, teeth extending, a biting maw rather than a mouth for speech or eating. Skin hardened into armor, muscles stretched and tightened.

The process took less time than the human needed to shout for help, and his cry turned to a scream as I bounded out of cover to attack. His reactions were excellent, but he wasn’t ready for the speed of a warrior in warform, and his shot struck empty air.

He didn’t get a second chance. A sweep of my claws struck the laser from his hands, a second sliced his neck open to the spine, and I was past him, rushing his companions as they tried to adjust to the change.

Hyperwaves danced at my command, lifting fallen stones and flinging them at my enemies. Sharp stone opened flesh, heavy stone smashed bones, and in the middle of it, I advanced like an angry god.

The humans were no cowards, but nor were they fools. Unprepared to meet resistance, they withdrew with discipline, sending enough fire my way to keep me busy as they moved from one piece of cover to the next, dragging their wounded with them. I followed, staying too close for them to set an ambush..

They fled up, out through a broken wall and onto the desolate sands beyond the tomb. I stopped in the opening and stared at the black desert that stretched to every horizon. When I last left the tomb, this was a beautiful place of repose. A stream running down from the mountains through verdant meadows, quiet birdsong all around, groves of trees providing shade for visitors. All gone now. The tomb was all that lived. A bitter irony, and a shocking sight.

It stopped me dead in my tracks, and that was almost the end of me. A laser, far more powerful than the hand-held weapons the raiders carried, stabbed past me to shatter rocks. Shards of superheated stone nicked my skin as I dove for cover, throwing up a cloud of sand to hide myself.

The spaceship fired again, turrets trying to track me. Fortunately, they were weapons intended for space combat—aiming at a single lifeform was not in the design specs, especially at such a short range.

It would only take one lucky shot to win them the battle. I could not risk it—my death would mean death to those I guarded. Killing the enemy mattered to me, but my oath was to defend the honored dead and my mate. With a curse, I returned to the shelter of the tomb’s walls.

7

TALIA

Jules was mid-apology when Kal’vamoved.It was almost like magic, the way he blurred past us, moving with a speed and grace that barely registered. Before I understood what was happening, he’d vanished into the tomb.

“What the hell?” Paulo’s voice shook nearly as much as his flashlight beam. “What was that?”

“Talia’s new boyfriend,” Jules said, her voice steady and level, so calm it had to be fake. I glanced her way, saw she was white as a sheet, and decided not to protest her choice of words.

“He didn’t look like that before.” Paulo said, still swinging his light around wildly, as though he expected Kal’va to be creeping up on us from the shadows.

I swallowed before answering, wishing I could sound as calm as Jules.

“You’ve only seen him when he’s sitting still. It’s different when he moves, and you can see how dangerous he is. And his claws were a lot smaller.” I shivered with the memory of their touch, the ghostly brush of diamond over my skin. They’d been dangerous then—now, they looked like weapons of war. He’d scared me, even before he turned sand into flying blades with a gesture.

That all made sense. What I couldn’t get over was how my body was responding. How was this, this monster,so damned sexy?

“No time to worry about that,” I muttered. “Let’s get into the crypt. We’ll be out of the line of fire there.”

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