Page 44 of Ragoru

The temptation to stop and investigate her surroundings for a moment disappeared with the realization that the cave creatures had caught her scent and were now on her trail, tearing their way down the tunnel with their mad, half-blind, scrambling speed, their bloodthirst for the hunt fueling their frenzy. And it was a frenzy. The screeches and snarls echoed admit panted, excited breaths and hisses. As Evie listened, she became aware that others had joined them, perhaps drawn by their calls because the noise that was following after her was not possibly made by just two beings. The scrape of claws and the slap of feet were too numerous. The overlap of vocalizations were layered in such numbers that it made the hairs on her arm stand on end.

It was a hunt for blood and flesh. She imagined that she could hear it in their voices as they seemed to hiss and call each other before shrieking with what she was beginning to suspect was echolocation to make up for their poor vision in the caves.

And Evie was on the menu!

Her pace turning frantic with the fear boiling through her, Evie plunged forward blindly, pushing back the sounds of pursuit and even the faint sound of something cracking—perhaps rocks falling in the distance.May they drop on one or more of the creatures and bury them.She ran until a metallic sheen caught the light of her luminary and she held it higher, a sense of excitement fueling her as she noticed a sheet of metal that could only be a door at the end of the tunnel. She wanted to laugh despite the ache in her lungs that made her want to puke from her mad run down the tunnel. It was the facility. Right there, plain as day. There had been an underground, cavernous route straight to it!

Without slowing, she ran straight for that door, her hands slamming on it as she finally came to an abrupt stop in front of it. Her hands slid along it as her heart pounded. There had to be a lock somewhere—

“Identification?” a broken, mechanical voice demanded.

“Evelyn Willock, field observer and employee of the Solum Wildlife and Sciences Division,” she heaved as she struggled to catch her breath.

“This designation is unrecognized.”

“There is an emergency,” she snapped as she tried to recall some of the work-arounds her department had been forced to do with some of the old tech. “Emergency shut down code alpha-delta-two-seven-nine-two-two.”

A heavy click echoed from the door, which made the creatures chasing after go wild as their shrieks became louder and more bloodcurdling as they boiled down the tunnel, numbering at least a dozen if not more. There was another crack and then another, but Evie didn’t waste time analyzing it. The moment the door swung open, she raced through and shoved it back in place with all her strength until it latched.

Within moments, the first of the bodies hit the door, followed by more and then more. She could hear claws scraping wildly against the metal, the latch rattling but not turning as if they didn’t understand the mechanics of it. She laughed softly in relief as she backed away from the door, glad to see the way the door was constructed. Not only did the manual handle need to be turned. There was a secondary compression handle above it that had to be operated simultaneously and required a bit more dexterity than she believed the feral creatures looming outside the door possessed.

Their shrieks followed her but grew more distant as she walked deeper inside, her attention now captivated by the building that rose all around her. Its stone walls were reinforced with numerous metal beams, and everywhere she looked there appeared to be various systems and displays, each she suspected were powered by a core solar generator. They came on by one as she approached, and her awe with the sort of technology she had only dreamed of overpowered her fear for the time being until she rounded a corner into a room marked lab and screamed.

Tubes lined the walls, each preserving samples of those creatures in various stages and even some that seemed different and covered with thick hair all over their bodies. There seemed to be male and female specimens collected together in preserved pairs with identical markers on their holographic tag. Evie peered down at the tag of the one closest to her.

Woodland specimen, male, fifth generation of symbiotic host batch Zelt-24.

Her brow furrowed as she made her way toward another end, toward the creatures that looked like the ones that pursued her through the cave, its gray, waxen body floating in its own vat of chemical preservatives.

Caveborn specimen, male, third generation of symbiotic host batch Kelf-9.

Her lips parting in horror, she stepped back, her hand clenching over her stomach. Bile rose fast as her stomach turned and she hurried to a waste disposal basket nearby and bent over it as she purged the contents of her stomach. She retched over and over until her stomach quit violently lurching and then slowly straightened as she swiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

“What the fuck has been going on here?” she whispered.

“Symbiotic Project Zelt-Kelfer,” a hologram gravely informed her as its flickering image popped from the wall. “Ms. Evelyn Willocks, are you the replacement sent from command?”

CHAPTER36

Thral snarled, his rage unsatisfied. Although the pain of the projectiles had dropped him more than once, his tough skin had absorbed most of the impact so that the projectiles didn’t bite deep. He bled a little from the impact but not for long. When the humans noticed that they were not penetrating deep enough to slow down, much less kill, either him or Sabol safely from a distance, they had fled, giving him no one upon whom to exact his revenge. Knowing that those same projectiles would have torn their mate up, however, was what kept his fury from banking. And frustrated him.

Grunting with disgust, he turned back toward Sabol as the male sneered in the direction of the fleeing humans. He would see Sabol struggling to control the need to chase the foes down and tear them apart. The urge to eliminate any threat to their family was as natural to Ragoru as breathing. But doing so would take them further from Vrishna and Evie. Although they had gotten away, he was uneasy not having them within his sight.

He peered around, his fur raising at that thought. There was something he was missing. The awareness of what it was slipped into his consciousness slowly, making his hackles rise dangerously.

“Sabol?” he growled as he glanced around warily and drew back a pace as he cautiously sniffed the air, searching for the scent trail. “Where is the huntsman?”

The male’s snarl dropped as a look of shock crossed his face. Sabol’s head craned around hastily as he rapidly turned, fear and hostility clouding his scent. “Vrishna!”

Sabol didn’t even attempt to lock onto the huntsman’s scent among the confusion of human odors. Instead, he bolted back into the trees, leaving Thral to race after him. The stench of the forest deepened and the wrongness of it made his fur stand on end, but Thral picked up the scent of their triad’s third and sped forward, dropping down to all six of his limbs to give him the extra boost to his speed. He seldom needed to do so since he ran with considerable speed on his legs, but at that moment every drop of speed felt needed and so he was able to ignore his dislike of having dirt clinging to the fur between his fingers and under his claws. He flew among the trees, a terrible snarl boiling out of him, promising death to the huntsman.

It was when the soft turf, grass, and bits of stones transitioned to littered fragments of bones that his gait was thrown off. His eyes widened at the sight of it, and the stench of the air mingled with the very faint trace scent of decay that lifted from the scattered remains. It was as if something had torn the humans apart and devoured them by the way the bones were pulled in so many directions and deposited so far from there. Predators and scavengers could do a lot of damage as they fed, but there was a frenzy to this that made his fur prickle anxiously. This was far more destructive than what even pack hunting beasts would do in his experience. This was the activity of a terrible and large swarm of predators ruthlessly killing and pulling apart its victims. Not even a starving triad caused so much damage. Skulls were broken open, and bones were scored far more deeply than even a Ragoru’s claws could inflict.

He was grateful when Vrishna’s scent trail turned away from the terrible sight and the abandoned buildings which they garishly and gruesomely decorated, heading back deeper in the forest and up higher into the rocky growth, leading up into the foothills closer to this part of the valley. Another scent slowly became more apparent, mingling with the scent of Vrishna. He recognized the huntsman, but that scent trail was old and wasn’t what made him snap his teeth defensively. He knew that Sabol detected it too by the way the male seemed to hunch more as he ran, his back arching so that the long, sharp blades of their protective plating rose threateningly as they burst through the cover of the forest and up the incline, racing toward the male crouched over Vrishna.

The Shining One gracefully stood at their approach, his long head fur streaming back to flutter as it moved gently behind his shoulders. A soft golden glow pulsed from the male’s body as he straightened his coverings.

“So there you are, Thral.” His eyes flicked over to Sabol. “And Sabol. I’m impressed. I truly believed that we lost you when you escaped the hunt. It seemed unlikely that you would survive so long out here by yourself. We were more hopeful when Thral and Vrishna turned up missing, since it implied that they were traveling together. I must admit that I thought perhaps we generously overcalculated your willingness to bond with other males when I came across Vrishna here.”

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