Red-hot anger flashes through me, consuming thought. Muscles tense, and my tail stiffens, rising behind me.
“Right,” I hiss, refusing to look at the females.
“Hey, what?” he asks, his eyes widening as he takes a step back.
The fog of the bijass encompasses everything, clouding my vision with the haze of pulsing frustration. These aren’t the females I want. Mine was sent away by Rosalind, and Visidion allowed it, forcing me to stay here.
Melchior’s shoulders drop, his hands come up before him, defensive, his tail stiffens.
Edicts. They guide us, rules laid down to keep us from losing ourselves to the bijass. I am myself. It’s difficult to contain my anger. Damn it, Visidion, I shouldn’t be doing this.
“I’m fine,” I say, tail dropping to the hot sand.
“Right,” Melchior says.
I glare at him and then turn on my heel. Ropes creak, a loud groan, then something snaps.
“Look out!” Errol screams.
“No!” Melchior hisses.
Chills run across my body, turning back as chaotic sound explodes. Screams, stone, cracks and booms crashing.
Melchior flies through the air, wings spread wide as he dives towards Penelope. Penelope is screaming, a high-pitched screech tearing at my ears unrelentingly. Errol is off the ladder going backwards, and the massive stone he was moving into place is falling. The ropes have broken.
It’s a frozen tableau. Stomach dropping, I push forward and everything before me moves at the same time. Melchior’s hand pushes Penelope, forcing her back. She stumbles, arms pinwheeling backwards. Errol is dropping slower than the stone. Melchior lands on his left shoulder, slamming into the ground. Ropes pile up around him, the stone closing on him.
I’m not going to make it.
I leap, spreading my wings, catching a draft of air.
The stone drops towards Melchior’s head. I have to reach him. I can’t fail.
Melchior rolls to the side, trying to get clear, but Errol falls in the way, blocking him as the two males collide.
I glide across the distance and slam to the ground under the stone as it drops. The weight of it strains my muscles. They scream with pain in response as I lift. The stone is slick and my fingers slip, I can’t get a grip.
“MOVE!” I scream.
Can’t lose my grip, have to keep it up. Lift, damn it, lift!
My knees tremble as I fight to keep it up. The stone weighs three or four times as much as I do. Melchior and Errol scrabble around each other, trying to get clear as the rock slips further. I can’t hold it.
My back spasms. Pulling up, I shift my position and get my knees underneath myself but I can’t hold it much longer. Muscles trembling, I focus on breathing through the pain. A tremble rips through me.
“CLEAR!” Melchior yells.
I glance left and right through slitted eyes, then push the rock up and away. It falls to the ground and thuds.
“Holy shit,” Penelope exclaims.
“Damn,” Melchior says, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Panting, hands on thighs, I glance at him, fighting the urge to punch him in the mouth for such a stupid question.
“Do I look okay?” I hiss.
The ground beneath our feet jumps.
“I’m sorry,” Errol says. “I thought the—”
“Shh!” Melchior cuts him off, eyes widening as the ground trembles then jumps again.
Ah, damn it, I thought it was more of the stones falling.
“Wha—” Penelope starts, but Melchior places a hand over her mouth.
Straightening myself and looking around, I watch as the loose top layer of sand dances, bouncing up and down as the trembling of the ground increases. Noise, too much noise. The females working the garden chattering, Padraig clanging metal into shape.
“QUIET!” I scream over my shoulder.
The ground behind me explodes, dirt showering down, and the scream of a zemlja echoes off the cliff walls.
3
Sarah
Snoring and shifting bodies create a white-noise effect.
Slipping out of the room I share with five other girls, I lower myself out of the door and out into what was a hallway. Keeping close to the wall, I creep my way along, pausing every other step to listen for anyone coming.
I need to use the bathroom. That’s my excuse if one of the handful of people on guard duty sees me.
Why don’t you use the buckets we set up in each room? They’ll ask me. I don’t want to wake up my roommates. I respond. Oh, that makes perfect sense. What a nice person you are, they respond.
Okay Sarah, stop running the scenario in your head. You’ve got this. Also, stop referring to yourself in the third person. That’s weird. Right, okay.
Is it bad I’m mentally talking to myself? Better than focusing on how hard my heart is beating right now. Or the cold beads of sweat running down my back despite the fact that it must be close to one hundred ten or twenty degrees, even now that the suns are down for the night.
I could be crazy. Good job, Sarah, psychoanalyze yourself while you sneak out in the middle of the night. Brilliant idea, I love it.
Footsteps echo off the metal walls of the crashed ship, and I freeze, pressing hard against the wall. My heart pounds hard in my chest. I’m dizzy. All my brilliant excuses for being out now are gone, I can’t remember a single one of them.
The steps move closer. Crouching lower I imagine the shadows covering me like a blanket hiding me from sight. Bathroom. Bathroom. That’s all, need the bathroom. Perfectly sensible.
Unable to breathe, the steps are right behind me, a metal wall dividing us. A cough, a shuffle, and then they move on. Eyes closed tight, I count. One, two, still going away, three, four. When I get to ten, I can’t hear them any longer. Held breath explodes out of me, and I gasp in fresh air. The pounding in my chest slowly returns to normal. Sliding the rest of the way outside the ship, I don’t encounter anyone else.
While Gershom insists that guards be on duty, which I give him credit for, those who draw the duty don’t want to do it. The entire camp is apathetic about everything. They have no idea that the only reason they’re eating right now is because of Drosdan and me. Well Drosdan, really. He’s left meat for us that I conveniently ‘find’ and bring back to camp. Either none of them have thought to ask how I can keep getting so lucky finding dead bivo, or else they don’t want to rock the boat by asking.
Gershom has given me a look a few times, but that’s it. He must know that without my ‘luck,’ his camp would starve. Running across the open sand as fast as I can, the hair on my arms stands on end. Adrenaline pumps through my body. Being outside at night is scary as hell. The sismis hunt at night, roving packs of flying bat-like creatures big enough to take down a bivo, the large herd animals that roam the dunes. They let out a screech warning of an impending attack, but it’s not like there is someplace I can hide if I’m targeted.
The area around where our section of the generation ship crashed is empty, rolling dunes. A few rocks jut out of the ground here and there, but nothing that would provide any protection. So far I’ve been lucky.
It doesn’t matter. I’ll see him soon. He’ll protect me.
His bulging arms and gentle strength will wrap around me, pulling me tight against the hard muscles of his chest. His cool scales against my cheek. His fingers in my hair. My core tightens in anticipation.
We haven’t actually done it, yet. The opportunity hasn’t been there for us. I know I’m his treasure, he wants me to be his forever, but we haven’t found a way to make it work yet. Duty is always in the way. His or mine.
I’m first to arrive at the rock protrusion we had worked out to be a drop spot, so I sit with my back against it. The moon is high in the clear sky, casting its silver glow across the rolling sand. Leaning back, I stare up at the stars twinkling brightly above. Rosalind has been out there now and brought back more aliens with her. I saw them
from a distance but didn’t meet them. It’s hard to keep my cover with Gershom, so I couldn’t get away.
What else is out there? Who else?
My thoughts wander as the stars turn in the sky. The hours pass by. I rise and turn a slow circle, hoping to see Drosdan approaching. It’s not like him to miss a rendezvous. Emptiness forms in my stomach, pulsing with loneliness. Is he okay? What could keep him away?
Doing my best to push aside those thoughts, I gather a few small pieces of rock and form a circle. Inside the circle I draw a heart. It’s crude, but enough. He’ll know I was here as long as nothing happens to it. If someone else does come across it, it’s not like they could trace it to me specifically.
A dim glow is forming on the horizon telling me I’m out of time. I look around one last time before I give up and jog for the ship.
4
Drosdan
The wall trembles. The zemlja climbs into the sky, thirty feet or more into the air, undulating its body, massive mouth opening to reveal the concentric rows of teeth going down its gullet.
Females scream behind me and the males close by hiss. I’m unarmed and can do nothing against the zemlja. Melchior grabs his lochaber off his back, whirling the bladed staff in one hand as he races towards the deadly worm. Errol grabs for Penelope.
I run towards the monster. A massive hammer Errol uses to shape stone lies on a table, so I grab it as I pass. The zemlja leans back, screaming, about to throw itself forward. They hunt by sound, so it will throw itself at the loudest noise and eat whatever it lands on.
If it does, the wall we’ve worked so hard to build will be destroyed, and it’s so big it will likely land in the middle of the garden, with all our human females. The red suns rest on the horizon behind its monstrous body. I have only moments before it moves.
“Melchior!” I yell, pointing to the far side of the worm.
He nods and changes directions. We both spread our wings, bounding across the distance between us and the thing’s body. Swinging the hammer one-handed, I put everything I have into it, slamming the massive head of the weapon into the worm.
The hard scales that protect it reverberate with the force of my blow. Numbing vibrations race up my arm to my shoulder. A web of cracks appears at the point of impact and the zemlja scream reaches a new pitch. Its body twists then retreats, sliding down into the ground.
Melchior slices at it with his lochaber but the blade slides across the scales, not finding purchase.
“Don’t let it get below,” I yell.
Melchior glares at the zemlja, swinging his lochaber again. As the body of the zemlja slides back into the hole it burst out of, I slam it over and over with the hammer. A shadow falls on me. High, high above me the monster’s end is bent towards me, open maw plunging down.
I leap to the left. Its jaws snap shut, catching my tail.
Pain erupts, a wildfire of sensation racing through my body, then I’m ripped into the air. Twisting, desperate, I turn towards the zemlja and try to grab on. My fingers slide across its scales, not finding purchase. The ground races up. It’s dragging me under. Can’t let that happen.
Bending in half, the pain in my tail increasing as I struggle, I lift myself up and slide my fingers into its maw. The maw is five different parts that open or close, but with my tail stuck in it, there is a gap for me to get a grip.
Grabbing two sides, I pull it apart, trying to force it open.
Muscles straining, it seems impossible. Harder, willing the damn thing to open, I strain with all I’ve got.
“DROSDAN!” Melchior yells, but I focus.
No attention to spare, have to get free.
Sarah is waiting. Her sweet, soft face fills my thoughts, and with it comes the rage. Pulling the bijass around me, I give myself to it. Anger, rage, the pounding demand to dominate. Nothing will best me.
“RAHRR!” I scream, pulling with everything I have.
The mouth moves, barely, but the thing adjusts its bite, and that’s the opening I need. Roaring, I pull, forcing its mouth open and there’s a ripping sound. The lower lip I was holding onto tears, hanging limp. My tail drops out, blood dripping, but free. The zemlja bucks, throwing itself forward then back. It costs me my grip, tossing me off. I’m flying through the air, wings spreading to slow my drop, but I’m tumbling head over heels. Wings catch the breeze, stopping the circular motion, but I drop to the ground like a stone.
Slamming into the ground, sand in my mouth and eyes, I roll to ease the impact. Coming to a stop, I spin and jump to my feet.
Melchior slices at the zemlja over and over, sharp blade glinting in the setting suns as it twirls around his head, cutting across. It’s ineffective, unable to penetrate the thick scales, barely scratching the surface.
Behind him, the wall we’ve worked so hard to build is crumbling as the zemlja undulates sending shock waves through the ground. The monster screams, a high-pitched sound that cuts through my thoughts. Pain explodes in my head, driving me to my knees. The worm waves back and forth, circling—something is about to happen.
Time slows to a crawl. Melchior’s blade slices through the air, moving an inch at a time. The zemlja leans back, its long, thick body blocking out the sun.
“MOVE!” I scream at Melchior.
The words come out of my mouth too slow. The zemlja flings forward, time speeds up, Melchior looks up, eyes widening. His blade hits, making a resounding ringing echoing. He leaps, but it’s too late. The zemlja slams down, crushing him beneath its weight. Sand explodes into the air, blocking my vision. Leaping to my feet, I race into the cloud, my outer lenses snapping shut to keep the dirt out of my eyes.
Still can’t see. Slithering sounds, a muffled groan, and the thing is going back underground. I have to find Melchior. A cold ball of ice forms in my guts sending chills through my limbs. He has to be alive.
“Melchior!” I scream.
I can’t lose him. Holding my hands out I try to navigate to him by feel. The swirling sand from the zemlja fall continues. I strain my hearing for any signs of him but there’s nothing. Finally, my foot touches something. Kneeling and feeling blindly around, I find him. Melchior groans and tension drains from my muscles. I run my hands over him, fumbling blindly until I find his shoulders. Getting a solid grip, I pull hard and drag him away from the cloud of sand and dust. My lungs scream for air, but I can’t breathe, I’d only inhale sand and dirt. Dragging Melchior backwards towards what I think is the wall, I listen for the sounds of another attack. Silence lays heavy across the land. Did we drive it away?
A rock catches my foot, tripping me. Losing my grip on Melchior he drops to the ground as I stumbling clear of the cloud. Reaching into it, I grab Melchior and pull him out too. A trickle of blood runs out of his mouth, but his chest rises. He’s breathing at least.
The cloud of sand and dust swirls as I retreat, pulling Melchior’s limp form with me. The ground trembles and jumps. I leap backwards, jerking my friend with me. There’s a rumbling and then a scream as the zemlja bursts into the air again. I can’t fight it without leaving Melchior in harm’s way. Tightening my grip on his shoulders, I pull up, throwing him into the air. Ducking under his limp form, I pull him onto my shoulders, turn and run.
The zemlja roars before diving back under the earth behind me. Running as fast as I can, unable to open my wings for extra lift because Melchior lies across them, my pace is slower than it could be. The wall looms before me. Ragnar is coming, along with Padraig and Bashir. The three males wave, motioning frantically behind me.
“DUCK!” Ragnar yells.
Instinct takes over, and I duck without thinking. The zemlja whooshes over my head, swinging its body blindly around. I’ve hurt it, but it’s not giving up. Looking ahead, it’s too close to the wall and our home. I have to get it further out into the open desert, away from our people. Crouching, I lay Melchior on the ground, spinning back towards the zemlja and sprinting at it.
“Follow me!” I yell, just to make noise a
nd grab its attention.
Crouching low as it swings its massive body over my head, I run, stomping my feet as hard as I can. Zemlja hunt by sound; if I’m loud enough it will chase me. The ground beneath my feet rumbles. It’s working.
Straightening, I run faster, spreading my wings to ease my way across the soft sand. As my right foot contacts the earth, the ground jumps up to meet me, causing me to hit more forcefully. Painful shock waves race up to my knee, and it tries to give way, causing me to stumble. I’m struggling to regain my balance when the ground bucks again, and I’m thrown back into the air. The scream of the zemlja fills my ears as it explodes out of the ground behind me.
Tucking my head down, I fold my wings and pull my tail tight, hitting the ground on my shoulder and rolling to lessen the impact, but I hit hard. Something snaps in my shoulder. Pain explodes and the bijass takes over. Anger, white hot, out of control. Roaring my rage and leaping to my feet, I turn to face the monster. Its shadow falls over me, blocking out the suns. It is thirty feet or more in the air, waving in a circle, then it bends over.
Its open maw, hundreds of sharp teeth in concentric circles, catch the suns’ rays glinting. It slams down, fast. Holding my arms wide I welcome it. Reaching up, I grab the sides of its mouth. The impact drives me down into the sand. My knees scream in pain but hold. It pushes down, all of its weight, but I will not yield. Sarah is waiting for me. My treasure needs me. I will not be defeated by this creature.
The thing’s jaws try to close. Screaming, I hold them open, pushing back against it. Muscles trembling, pouring everything I have into defeating it, I push it back, inches only. Digging deeper, muscles straining, I push outward. Its breath chokes me, hard to breathe, have to hold it back.
Melchior, Ragnar, Padraig, and Bashir appear in the corners of my red-hazed vision. They attack the creature with their lochabers. It screams, pulling back, but now I pull it to me, blocking its retreat.
Sharp blades drive between its scales, finding the soft flesh underneath. It jerks up, pulling with all it has, I try to hold it down, but I’m lifted off my feet into the air, gripping tighter, forcing it to keep its mouth open. It won’t go underground as long as it’s open. Even a zemlja has to breathe.
Dragon's Desire Page 3
