Page 22 of Wrath

“Hurry!” I shouted to Dread and Varnog, although they were already doing their best. “Dread, give me your mines,” I asked after placing the last one I had.

He detached the pouch from his weapon’s belt and threw it down at me. I caught it mid-air and turned around just to see the first Jadozor rising on its four legs. It emitted a hissing sound that reminded me of a snake, its lizard eyes settling on me before looking up at my teammates.

Myriam started shooting the creature in the face. It hissed in anger and flexed its wings. Thankfully, it still seemed a little too groggy to take flight. Therefore, it charged me instead. Shield at the ready, I summoned a mouth dart from the sac at the back of my throat, coating it with my venom, and waited for the perfect moment to launch it. At first, Myriam’s blaster didn’t seem to be doing much damage, but after a dozen shots or so in a single area between the beast’s eyes, the scales finally appeared to cave in. The creature roared in pain, and I spit my dart into its mouth. It lodged itself inside the Jadozor’s throat, and the beast immediately began to choke.

I rushed it to try and split its skull open where the scales had caved in from the blaster shots, but another Jadozor came at me from the central tanks in the room. I raised my shield in extremis to block a vicious swipe of its serrated tail. The jarring strength of the blow reverberated through my arm. Had it struck me instead, it would have likely severed my arm.

I bashed its face with my shield in a downward motion, making it fall to the ground, and exposing its back to me. Without slowing, I sliced the more vulnerable section of thinner scales along its spine. My scythed limb cut right through it like a heated knife through butter. The creature screeched, throwing its head back. I swiped my other scythe at its gaping mouth, splitting its face in half. The top part flopped back onto its back, and my scorpion tails stabbed the exposed flesh in a quick one-two punch. A tremor coursed through the creature and then it went still.

“BEHIND YOU!” Myriam shouted.

I blindly swiped my shield behind me while spinning around to face the incoming threat. My shield solidly connected with the jaw of another Jadozor, but a perfectly placed mouth dart fired by Dread embedded itself in the back of my attacker. Within seconds, it was writhing on the ground, its mouth foaming from the venom in the dart.

A quick look up had me almost weeping with relief. Dread was currently holding Myriam, having sufficiently expanded the hole where Linette was sneaking through. I took on two more Jadozors with Myriam shooting at them and Dread launching both his mouth darts and the poisoned needles from his scorpion tails. As soon as Linette was on the other side, Varnog passed a still unconscious Nathalie to his mate through the opening. I wanted to believe our medical officer hadn’t suffered a grievous injury, but for now I couldn’t focus on that.

I was quickly becoming overwhelmed by the growing number of Jadozors joining the fray. Even with the help of Myriam and Dread, I couldn’t block all the attacks launched at me. Despite my thicker scale armor in my battle form, their vicious claws and tails were increasingly finding their marks. With several of the beasts starting to take flight, my teammates shifted their attention to the airborne ones—as they should—which left me to fend for myself.

Knowing I would soon die, I renewed my efforts to place a few more mines on the walls in between two blows. Varnog was on the other side, now taking Myriam from Dread. At least, the mortal members of my team were now safe. Just as the thought crossed my mind, an atrocious pain exploded in my back when a Jadozor bit one of the frilled membranes on my back and ripped it right off. Grinding my teeth through it, I chopped off one of its front wings and spit acid in its gaping mouth while stabbing its eyes with my scorpion tails.

Another Jadozor swiped its own tail at me, I ducked just in time to avoid getting beheaded, but it severed my left scorpion tail, and part of my remaining frill.

“I’m coming for you,”Dread mind-spoke to me.

“NO! Go! Make sure the others get out! Brace for the explosion!”I telepathically shouted to him.

I felt his psychic nudge as he squeezed through the opening.“See you soon, brother,”he said before disconnecting from my mind.

The creatures could smell my blood and were now fighting each other to get to me. As long as they focused on me, it would give the others a chance to get to safety. I needed to delay the explosion for as long as possible. Using my shield, I blindly blocked what I could, swung at the swarm with my scythed blades, spat acid and mouth darts, and stabbed at them with my remaining scorpion tail until it, too, was ripped off my back. When the massive jaw of one Jadozor closed around my right leg, shattering my femur, I spit a mouth dart in its eye, making it let go, only to have the lethal claws of another tear it right off.

I cried out, pushing the debilitating pain away while fumbling with my weapons belt for the detonator. Just as I lifted the security lid to press the button, a serrated tail speared me from the back, straight through my right heart and part of my right lung, and protruded in front of me by a good foot. My lungs and mouth immediately filled with blood. The room spun, and I watched with horror as the detonator fell from my hand, tumbling ahead, out of reach. The Jadozor yanking its tail back out of me nearly split me in half. I fell to my remaining knee and would have faceplanted if not for the creatures biting at my arms, keeping me partially propped up.

With the energy of despair, I fought through the agony and the veil of darkness descending before my eyes to summon an ultimate mouth dart, even as I choked on my own blood. The dart shot out of my mouth towards the detonator just as the massive maw of a Jadozor was closing over my head. The last thing I heard before my soul left my body was my mate shouting my name in my psychic mind.

Chapter 8

Kwan

Iwatched in horror while Wrath was getting torn to shreds. Each cut, each blow was a physical pain I experienced with him. It felt like I was relieving the nightmare of Kevin’s death all over again, especially that tail that had speared right through Wrath, just like that debris had punctured right through the windshield, through Kevin trying to shield me with his body, and then through my womb.

Shock had kept me paralyzed in my seat as the drama unfolded. The explosions of the mines Wrath had set up, snapped me out of my horrified daze.

“Linette!”I mind-spoke to her.

“I caught him,”she telepathically replied, immediately guessing what I needed to know.“We need a way out! The base is sealed. Reinforced doors block the entrance to the lift. I don’t think Myriam will be able to hack them open.”

Blinking back the tears that were pricking my eyes, I took a shuddering breath and forced myself to focus. My team needed me. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart. I was a decorated military officer. I didn’t crumble under pressure.

“I’m on it,”I replied, displaying a mosaic of the team’s body cams.

Movement on the other monitors displaying the feed from the Nomad drew my attention. I cursed under my breath at the sight of the empty cells of the brig. I’d seen Marcelle do something strange with her cybernetic arm, but after the organic bombs had gone off, I’d been too morbidly transfixed by what was happening with my team to pay attention to the Coalition crew. She was back on the bridge, no doubt undoing everything Myriam and Linette had done to prevent them from taking off. I wanted to stop them from fleeing, but saving my team was more important.

Flipping through the files Myriam had transferred from the base, I pulled up the schematics of the underground research lab. There had to be some control panel that would allow them to deactivate the emergency lock down, or at least some other way out.

Varnog cursed and turned towards the hallway leading back to the stasis room. Despite the multiple explosions, the outer appearance of the reinforced doors sealing the room seemed unscathed. But dark smoke was pouring out of the hole through which the team had escaped… and the head of a Jadozor. The creature was too big to fit but was fighting to force its way through, causing some parts of the stone around the opening to fall off. It would only be a matter of time before they managed to come out.

Varnog, Linette, and Dread all moved closer to the opening and showered the trapped creature with blaster fire. Heart pounding, I flipped through various pages of schematics, none of them being of any use. For a split second, I considered blowing up the front door of the base with missiles from a chaser. However, assuming it opened the doors, it would only destroy the lift without opening the other set of doors in the lower level, which prevented my friends from entering the lift to begin with.

The Jadozor in the opening finally went limp from the concerted fire power of my team. But the way its body jerked, the other Jadozors trapped inside the room were clearly ramming into it, trying to force the dead creature out. Eventually, one of them seemed to realize that yanking it back inside the room was the way to go. As soon as the cadaver disappeared from the opening, another beast tried to worm its way out, only to meet the same fate as its predecessor.

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