Page 30 of Venomous Heart
And knowing why didn’t make things easier. Still, she wouldn’t belong to him the way he had warned her about. She had belonged to Knut all her life. She wouldn’tbelongto anyone, ever again.
Arlen didn’t even love her. This mating thing, the Venom—it was just some biological impulse pushing a male to take a female. She didn’t need him. He could keep his mouth, his hands and his entire hard, unyielding body to himself. She wasn’t going to cry because of him. Well, she wasn’t going to cry more than she already had. And she had… a lot.
Enough was enough.
She wasn’t hiding in Knut’s old mansion anymore. She had to look for the Exo-Heart, and there was no way for her to search while she hid in the mansion. The only place she could work without the risk of being discovered was in her office in the medical clinic. No one would come find her there.
A nagging suspicion had been eating at her since the morning of her altercation with Arlen.
Why had Knut built Facility Twenty-One so far from all others? Why would he spend all that money, and risk all those precious humans by housing them in such a remote location?
There was only one reason she could think of.
The Vault. The Vault had to be close by. That way, Knut could secretly monitor the activity around it and access it without raising suspicion.
And now, Facility Twenty-One was unreachable. Dread settled in the pit of her stomach as she walked through the deserted hallways up to a side door mainly used by Knut’s servants, but now mostly ignored by everyone.
Something was happening in the Southern Hemisphere. It could be more than a magnetic storm. This could be it. The Vault, and the Exo-Heart that could save Uril.
And she had to know.
Still, she had to brace herself against the door frame to gather her courage before pushing it open. The last time she’d stepped out, she’d almost lost her life. So had Uril. But that wasn’t about to happen. Uril was safe in the mansion, at least for now.
Finally, she was outside. The sun blazed high and hot over the square and Ava shielded her eyes from its harsh light.
“What in the world?”
The people stood in the square. All of them.
People were amassed together, standing in perfect lines, row after row, like children at school. Women and girls were on one side, and men and boys on the other. Even from a distance, Ava could tell some of the younger children were crying, and some of the women looked about to do the same.
An Eok whose name she didn’t know stood in front of the people and by his side was Jonah, whose face was ashen. Fear was as heavy in the air as the unbearable heat.
Ava moved toward the strange assembly. Eyes lifted to her in surprise, but no one moved in her direction. She saw Edmila in the second row of women, her eyes wide with shock as she locked gazes with Ava. The girl shook her head slowly from side to side in a silent warning. Ava stopped walking. A movement at the back, from inside the large residential building, caught her attention. Whimpers and shouts spread through the assembled humans, but none of them moved.
Ava had the distinct impression that none of them dared move. They were petrified.
“Midnight God!” A familiar voice reached her and Ava twisted sideways to see Arlen stalking toward her, his face a mask of pure fury. “What are you doing here? I told you to stay inside.”
“And I’m supposed to obey your orders?” Ava began to argue, but she was silenced as Arlen grabbed her forearm and half dragged her back toward the mansion. He pulled her along so fast, she tripped over her feet and fell, but Arlen’s grip didn’t loosen. If anything, it got tighter. “You’re hurting me!”
A trill came from behind, a strange sound: dry and impossibly fast. The sound increased until it sounded like a multitude of claws clacking on stone.
“Commander Arlen!” a voice called from behind them. A voice like nothing Ava had ever heard before, like metal grinding on metal, underscored by a series of clicking sounds that sounded both hollow and dry.
Arlen stopped dead in his tracks at the shout, flinching visibly as he looked briefly down to the ground. The shadow of something too much like fear flitted across his eyes. At his reaction, Ava stopped struggling.
“Whatever you do, don’t say a word.” There was urgency in Arlen’s voice, and more than a little apprehension. “Let me talk for you.”
“I demanded to assess all human specimens on Aveyn.” Again, that metallic grind, those clicking sounds, but closer. “Yet you clearly wish to conceal this one.”
Ava turned to follow Arlen’s movement and her heart stopped beating. A primal terror filled her bones as she watched a ten-foot tall monster walk toward her and Arlen, stalking on long, fine limbs of a green so deep it was almost blue. The creature had six limbs, four that she obviously used as arms, each topped with four fingers that curved into claws. Her body was as long as it was tall, made of three sections connected to each other by mobile exoskeletal armor. She had a triangular shaped face with two completely black eyes, reflecting the sunlight without any semblance of emotion as two mandibles opened and closed at her mouth. She looked like an insect, and Ava immediately understood why.
This nightmarish creature was a Mantrilla female, the largest of all the sentient species in the Ring—and by far the deadliest. Its strength rivaled even that of an Eok, but its mind was infinitely more dangerous. They felt no mercy in their relentless struggle for power, their matriarchal society based on a single pure belief: that strength surpassed any virtue. That strength was the only virtue.
The Mantrilla moved with fluid motions, winding a gracious path between the rows of terrified humans as more of the creatures—albeit smaller and less frightening—emerged from the building.
Male Mantrillas. Bred as soldiers and breeders, utterly loyal to the matriarchs.
