Page 84 of Seeded By Two

His expression disintegrated, leaving a smoldering crevice where his head had been just a moment earlier.

His body fell to its knees and then slumped forward.

I immediately rolled back behind the wall again.

The creature’s blood was so thick it didn’t fall between the tiny holes in the floor’s latticework beneath our feet.

I shifted position and wiped the sweat from my eyes.

I glanced around the corner again, looking to take on the third and final aggressor — except I knew he would not be so rash as the last one.

No doubt he would do the smart thing and wait for reinforcements to join him.

Something shimmered at the corner of my eye.

The purple blood that spilled across the grating floor shone with some internal light as if someone were waving a torch over it.

Gradually, peeling back a sheet of paper, the blood turned from purple to green.

My stomach fell between my feet as I realized the significance of this.

I risked glancing around the corner at the headless corpse on the floor.

The creature I had shot, the creature that I had destroyed, was not a Jizzik at all…

It morphed into its original body.

That of a Ukmat.

The blood fell from my face as if I had been the one who had lost his head.

The creatures hadn’t randomly attacked this transport ship…

Their targets were not the females or anything else on this ship…

And these things were not pirates…

I was their target.

I was putting Feon and Beth in harm’s way.

19

BETH

The air buzzed with energy from the globule masses of plasma that seared the air and smashed into the walls opposite.

It was like hurling a water balloon in slow motion, except when it struck the wall, it didn’t just make it wet but smothered it in a bright turquoise-blue energy, melting it, the material dripping down the wall like hot wax.

Except it wasn’t wax but plasma…

One of the most dangerous substances known in the galaxy.

I held my hands over my ears — not to block out the high-pitched electronic hiss of plasma that reminded me of a dance track — but because of how terrifying the situation was.

With Feon hastily working at the escape pod’s controls and Aslas fighting the attackers, I was left in the middle of the war zone.

Just a few moments earlier, I had been sitting on the ship, numb, wondering what I was going to do once I returned home.

---