Page 69 of Echoes of the Tide

He bared his teeth, showing them his own weapons that were far greater than their own. If they wanted to threaten him with those tiny knives, they deserved to know what beast they faced.

The first person rushed toward him. It was a female, and she screamed as she ran. There were two knives in her hands, both of them flailing with her anger. He turned away from the sight, flexing his arm spines as she got close. They caught her in the chest and just underneath her jaw, spearing through the soft flesh and bursting out of her mouth. She let out a little gurgling noise, her eyes widening. But she didn’t stop trying to stick him with those knives.

“Pity,” he muttered as he retracted the spines and let her drop onto the ground. “There is some bravery in you. Or perhaps it is foolishness.”

They all converged on him, then. Everything became a blur of flashing scales and sharp objects. His claws bit into every flesh that he could find, while his jaws continued to rend flesh from bone. All he could hear were the screams of the dying andthose who continued to fight him as though there was no choice for them to stop. Some of them should have run. Some of them could have.

A knife plunged through the fluke of his tail, then another. Five of them that all pinned him to the floor, lest he rip them through the delicate membrane. He wouldn’t be able to swim right if he tore his damn fluke in half, and he was fucking proud of how pretty it was.

Hissing, he spun around on the people who were there, but they danced out of his reach. More leapt onto his back, and he knew they thought this was the end. They would pin him down, slice through more of his fins, force him to bend to their madness.

All of his spines stood up straight again. Shorter spines than the ones on his forearms, though just as sharp. They all lifted at once, piercing through the flesh of these achromos almost too easily. Blood dripped down his sides, but this time, he did not retract the spines. He used their bodies as shields, stuck as they were on the spines that held them against his sides. A few of them were still alive, moaning or shrieking in their pain.

He must look like a nightmare. At least four corpses were stuck on him as he pulled out the blades in his fluke, one by one. He glared at them all, hatred seeping out of his pores along with the black blood that spread around them.

“I am going to kill you all,” he said. “I will watch you die. Hold you close as the life flees from your body so that I can consume your souls. One by one. I will devour them and bring them into the abyss where you will be plagued by the souls of the drowned for an eternity.”

They couldn’t understand him, but perhaps there was some sense of reason in their minds still. A few of them stepped away from him. Doubt flashed in their gazes as they had a moment of hesitation. Others tightened their grip on their weapons.

The sound of more footsteps approached, and Maketes knew he had to leave. This was not where he should be. Enough achromos could kill him, after all. He was only one warrior against many. Even if they weren’t all that talented at fighting, even if they had weak weapons, eventually they would overwhelm him.

Baring his teeth, he planted his hands against the floor and launched himself forward. Now that he’d been inside these buildings a few times, he knew how to move. His slithering tail was muscular enough to propel him forward with ease, even weighed down by the corpses. His arms were strong from years of swimming, and he dragged himself through the halls without having to stop. Even as he dripped blood. Even as he left a dark trail for anyone to follow, it did not matter.

Because he knew Ace was in trouble. If he died, then he died. It was an honorable death for one such as him and he would not mourn dying for the woman he... he...

Bursting through the hall in the direction where he knew she was, he could see that there were only a few people left outside of the room. A shriek of anger echoed around him, and he recognized the voice.

She fought. His kefi, with her heart of a shark and her bravery of all the sea itself, fought back against those who would hurt her. He’d never been so unworthy of a mate.

Maketes lunged for the two men lingering outside of the room. The first he grabbed at the shoulder and waist, ripping into the man with his claws until he’d nearly torn the achromo in half. Letting him drop, he loomed over the second man, his tail coiled beneath him to give him even more height.

The achromo stared up at him, his jaw loose as his gaze danced over all the dead bodies still clinging to Maketes’s form. The knife in his hand flashed, lunging forward, but all he managed to do was catch his blade on one of the bodies.

Maketes grinned as he sliced through that man’s throat and left him staggering down the hallway in seek of help. It was hard to fit through the door with all the bodies attached to him, so he had to retract his spines to get through. The bodies hit the ground with hard, wet thuds, and that was enough for everyone in the room to look back at him.

The old man laid in a corner. His hands clutched his throat where red fountained between his fingers. Wild eyes watched him, and Maketes wondered if the elderly man thought he was looking at his doom.

In a way, he could be. If there was anything that he’d done to Ace that was even questionable, Maketes planned to kill him too.

There were only three people left in the room. Two cackling females who paced back and forth in front of him like he should be intimidated by their show, and a man who held Ace by the hair.

In a flash, he used his tail to whip the two women’s legs out from under them, slamming his tail down upon them so hard that he felt their ribs break on impact. Then it was just him and the man. And the crowds of people trying to get into the door that he currently held closed.

“This what you want?” the man said. He wore a strange white mask with long, tall ears. Then he ran his blade along Ace’s throat, leaving a faint red line behind, but not breaking the skin. “This little bitch?”

He didn’t hesitate. He lunged forward, leaving the door unguarded as he reached for the man. It took such little effort to grab onto his hand, using it to reel the achromo in. Ace dropped like a stone, falling onto her hands and knees and crawling away from the two of them with the slightest whimper in her throat.

He’d deal with her fear later. Right now, he held the man up by his throat and kept a grip on the hand that held the knife.

“This doesn’t deserve to touch her,” he snarled, before taking the knife from the man’s grip with his teeth. Then he drew the hand closer, watching the man’s eyes widen beneath the mask as those fingers came ever closer to the sharp teeth filling Maketes’s mouth.

Those fingers slotted between his teeth too easily. Three of them came off with the first crunch. Blood spurted into his mouth and the sound of the man’s screams was music to his ears. He wanted to hear those screams for the rest of his days, enjoying the sound of bone snapping. Biting another mouthful of fingers, he finally spit them all out onto the floor and dragged the man closer to him.

“I will bite pieces off of you now,” he growled, his fins standing straight out. “I want you to stay awake for all of it. Every bite. Knowing you are being consumed by the very thing you fear.”

CHAPTER 28

She dropped the moment Maketes grabbed onto the man. Considering the last time he’d attacked people for touching her, she knew not to look. She didn’t even glance up at the noises that were being made or the way the man was screaming. She didn’t want to know what was happening.

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