Page 10 of Unleashed

The shrieker slammed into the quilled beast, knocking it off her. The creatures tumbled across the floor in a torrent of snarling, gnashing teeth, and raking claws. Swallowing, Nina scrambled back from the fight, flicking her gaze to the hulking rockfur. Its nostrils expanded and contracted as it took great, snuffling breaths, its dark eyes intent upon her. There was blood smeared on its tusks and horns and beaded on its fur.

Her hand fell on something smooth. She looked down to see the heartstones on either side of her. Lacking any other weapon close at hand, she picked them up.

The noises from the fighting beasts stopped.

Nina raised her gaze to find the shrieker and quilled beast standing beside each other, staring at her as intensely as the rockfur was. Bits of thought slipped past her defenses; though they came from three distinct minds, they were similar in nature.

—the stones, she has—

—blooded the stones—

—stones in her hands—

Nina’s breath was shallow as she watched the beasts slowly approach. With shaky hands, she placed the stones on the ground in front of her.

“These are yours?” she asked. “You can have them. I won’t take them.”

She retreated as they advanced, maintaining the distance between them, but her retreat hastened when the beasts began tochange. Her back hit the stone wall behind her; there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The beasts’ bodies twisted, contorted,compacted, and their faces tightened into masks of pain. Their agony washed over her, counteracted only by the awed numbness instilled by the scene unfolding before her. Paws gave way to fingers, snouts to noses and faces, and shoulders drew back into familiar, humanoid forms. All three creatures staggeringly reared up on their hind legs, but they weren’thindlegs anymore, justlegs, and they werepeople.

All three were tall and muscled, the rockfur the biggest by far. Each retained distinctive features of his beast form — quills, claws, horns, hooves, bone plates, fur, scales — but now there was something more familiar about them. The shapes of their faces and bodies, the bony protrusions on their brows, cheeks, and knuckles…

They reminded her of Orishok and his people.

Nina opened her mind to them for an instant, and she was so startled by what she sensed that she thrust a wall up to sever the connection. She was left wide-eyed and breathless.

Thesewerehis people.

Aduun curledhis fingers and tilted his head back as the final ripples of the change pulsed through him, running all the way to the tips of his quills. He released the breath that had been straining his chest and sucked in another ragged lungful of air. His body eased gradually. His limbs were unsteady, his head cloudy; how long had it been since he’d last reverted from beast form? How long since he’d been locked in that cage?

The weight of untold years threatened to crash down upon him. Years of burning rage, of gnawing hunger, of being reminded of his failures.

The heartstones.

Gritting his teeth, he shifted his gaze toward the stones on the floor and the female standing beyond them.

She didn’t quite look like any of the Creators he’d seen, but Kelsharn’s people had varied appearances, sometimes wildly so. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for one of them to don a form that looked small and delicate to disguise their true power. Such deception fit well into the games the Creators seemed fond of playing.

And she’d made the mistake of letting go of the stones, thus relinquishing her ability to control Aduun and his companions.

His quills rose.

There would be no better chance than this.

Aduun charged forward with a growl. He’d made Kelsharn bleed long ago, and he’d do the same to this Creator — or die in the attempt.

Long, talon-tipped fingers — Balir’s — closed around Aduun’s wrist, causing his momentum to falter, but it was Vortok’s powerful grip on his other arm that halted Aduun’s charge completely. Leaning forward, Aduun flattened his quills and scraped his claws on the floor for purchase. Vortok tugged Aduun backward and wrapped his thick arms around Aduun’s torso, lifting him off his feet. The female watched with fearful eyes.

“Release me!” Aduun snarled, flexing his muscles to battle Vortok’s hold.

Balir shifted his hand to Aduun’s shoulder. “Be still, Aduun.”

Aduun snapped his head to the side to glare at Balir. “She is of Kelsharn’s people, Balir. She must be destroyed before she takes the stones again!”

Balir frowned, his unseeing eyes downcast beneath the bone plates that began just above his brow and swept back over his skull. He lifted his free hand and pointed toward the female. “Use your eyes, you fool, andlook. She is not our enemy.”

“Why would one of his kind fall through the hole in the ceiling?” Vortok asked, his deep, rumbling voice vibrating through his chest and into Aduun’s back.

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