Page 57 of Venomous Lust
But there was no time for thoughts, no time for words. This was a time to run for their lives as the forest suddenly became alive. More roots were coming up from the ground and the previously undefined stench became unbearable.
They ran. Khal cut a mighty path along the way, his talons slicing roots on all sides, but more and more were coming up. The slightest touch of one of the roots to bare skin was enough to burn on contact, leaving behind raw, flayed flesh and searing pain.
They were closer and closer to the exit of the forest, but as they progressed, the roots shot out more aggressively, dodging some of Khal’s attacks to wrap higher around their bodies.
It was like they were learning. Like they knew what they were doing. They only had another twenty yards to go, but it might as well have been as far as the other side of the Ring.
“We won’t make it,” Hazel said as two roots wrapped around each of Khal’s legs simultaneously. The Eok showed no signs of fatigue or even pain, but his blue skin was marred with lines of red where the roots had touched him. Dozens of them.
As if the forest had heard her, a strange sound rose all around them, like thousands of insects buzzing. She understood a second later that it came from the trees.
The trees that were not trees at all. These things were predators.
Still, Khal kept going, slicing roots, moving forward slowly, one foot at a time. He wasn’t giving up.
“It’s the stalks!” Hazel shouted as she stepped on the wriggling severed remnant of one of the roots. “They’re talking to each other. They’re communicating.”
Khal glanced at her for a split second, then jumped forward, diving in with his talons outstretched. Only he wasn’t aiming at the four roots shooting simultaneously at him, but at the wide, glistening trunk of the closest stalk. His long talons embedded deep in the trunk and a great screech shook the entire forest, spreading from stalk to stalk like a wind made of fury.
The roots retracted for a second as the stalk screamed. Khal wasted no time. He turned around, grabbed her hand, and ran. Hazel barely touched the ground as they left the forest behind, falling to the grassland in a heap.
As the harsh red sun hit her face, Hazel turned onto her back, backing away as far as she could from the carnivorous forest.
At her side, Khal was unmoving. As she looked upon his profile, she saw his face was drawn, his features tight and his talons still embedded in the ground. But he wasn’t looking at the forest, wasn’t looking at the monstrous trees that were not trees.
No, his gaze was set on something behind them, on the grass plain. Dread filled Hazel’s stomach as she turned around to see a group of a dozen people standing just a few feet ahead. They were tall, lit from behind by the strong light of the red sun, but their silhouette was one Hazel would recognize under any circumstances.
Ilarian guards.
A snarl came from Khal as a slim, tall figure clad in a blazing white suit stepped forward.
“Now, now, Commander Khal.” A familiar, fluted voice rang above Hazel’s head, one that spread through her veins like poison, opening the abyss of her past into a pit of terror. “I suggest you don’t do anything foolish.”
No. It can’t be.
But as the slim figure got closer, that face took form. The face that had haunted her nightmares, chilled her to the bone even in the heat of summer.
“Knut.” Her voice was a whisper in the wind, but his thin lips stretched in a satisfied grin. His aristocratic brows lifted in delight as he knelt in front of her.
“You.” Knut tilted his head, his silky black long hair falling in a lush cascade behind his pointed ears. A slow, impossibly wide grin lifted the corners of his lips, exposing tiny, pointed teeth. “I remember you. You’re the spunky one, the one who defied me.”
Hazel’s entire body trembled as the Ilarian guards approached, their yellow skin glistening under a layer of sweat, their faces all identical, as devoid of expression as they were of emotion. Each was aiming an ionic gun directly at Khal, their eyes hard and merciless. Their features were flat, almost non-existent in that yellow skin of theirs, giving them a permanent neutral expression.
She hated the Ilarians as much as she pitied them.
There was no point in appealing to their sympathy, no point in even talking to them. The Ilarians were clones, fabricated in a laboratory, motherless and fatherless. They had been made without free will, created to obey orders from their maker. No conscience, no soul to prevent them from committing the most horrific actions, they had been the backbone of Knut’s operations on Aveyn for as long as the humans could remember.
Hazel backed closer to Khal. His face was drawn tight, those impossibly sharp features set in lines of pure wrath. His entire body vibrated with the need for violence, to unleash the savagery that had made his kind the ultimate warriors.
“It was you.” Khal spoke low, his voice like a growl. “You shot the Myrador down.”
Knut watched Khal, sighed deeply, then shook his head. “Eoks are so very tedious, so dim.” There was boredom in Knut’s voice. “So predictable.”
“How did you manage to make a ship without identifiers?” Khal asked, his tone one of pure hatred. “It’s impossible.”
“Impossible,” Knut mused, his head tilting to Hazel again, his eyes twinkling with delight as they trailed down her body. “Your kind will never learn. You live on honor and strength. On loyalty.” He chuckled at the last word. “Wealth is the only true power. There is nothing that can’t be bought. The only trick is to figure out at what price, and to be able to pay it.”
The ugliness of Knut’s mind shone through for a few brief seconds as he stared at Khal. Then he lost interest and stared beyond them at the carnivorous forest.
