Teeth & Claws_A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “We are Idonan!” the actor laughed. “All of us are beautiful.”

  “So they are,” Leara said as she passed her bright blue eyes over the seat where Dragon, Lux, Calisto, and I sat. Her eyes settled on me for half a moment, and I feared that she might have guessed who I was, but then she turned to the two women robed in white with a question on her face.

  “Are these your handmaidens, Princess Aasne?”

  “Yes, my queen,” the auburn-haired woman said as she bowed her head. “They are maidens themselves, and it is our tradition that they remain covered until after the ceremony as to not detract the eyes from me.”

  “I doubt that is possible,” Leara laughed, but the Waymund queen was beautiful herself, her movements reminded me a bit of Sivaha. She had the calm confidence of someone who knew she was beautiful and was used to men doing her bidding.

  The proximity of the Waymund king and queen was putting their guards on edge, and I could see a group of Valkyries move to the corners of the throne room so that they could have crossfire opportunity. We had planned for this also, but I still felt my stomach drop when I counted their numbers again.

  This wasn’t going to be easy, and I wondered if it would be worth it to just grab the two monarchs now.

  “I do appreciate beautiful women,” King Goki said, and I saw Leara’s mouth twitch around her smile. “Allow me to look upon these two women, perhaps I might find one of them worthy to take as an underwife for Leara.

  “After the ceremony,” the actor said. “It is our tradition to--”

  “King Toriton,” Goki interrupted. “I would hate to remind you that this alliance was your idea. You desperately came to us for help and offered your daughter as a tribute to us. I do agree with the thought of us forming an alliance, but that bond might be strengthened if you allow me to consummate with more of your Idonan women.”

  “Let us begin the ceremony,” Queen Leara said as she placed her hands on her husband’s left bicep. “You will have the rest of the night to gaze upon their women and speak with Toriton about the alliance.”

  “Their coverings intrigue me,” the tall man said as he reached for Sivaha. My wife leaned away from his hand, and he missed grabbing her hood.

  My heart leapt in my throat, and I felt my grip tighten on my pulse rifle.

  “Careful, my lord,” Sivaha whispered with words that dripped honey. “This is a time for your son and soon to be daughter. There will be time later to look upon us, and perhaps other things, if your wife permits.”

  “Heh,” Goki scoffed, and then shook his head as he looked back at Aasne. “My son won’t know how to ride this one. I’ll have to show him how to do it first, but then I can sample the others she brought.”

  The beast in my soul started to growl, and I had to close my eyes and try to picture the wind blowing over the waves of a blue ocean. It was the same story with all the Nordar kings I had met. They were all full of themselves and gave little respect to others. I really wanted to put a bullet through this fucker’s face, but the timing was not perfect.

  Yet.

  “I did not bring my daughter and her handmaidens for your pleasure, King Waymund,” Toriton hissed. “There was to be the forming of an alliance. Our clans are of equal power, and we must speak of the consolidation of the Vaish and--”

  “The Vaish are of no real concern to me,” Goki scoffed as he shook his head. “The crows only pick apart dead bodies. They lack the strength of a horse.”

  “But they have absorbed the Skyad Blood Overlord Clan,” Toriton said. “We are in danger.”

  “I have heard those rumors, but it might not be true,” Goki said. “I have not confirmed it, but I have a hard time believing that Skyad would kneel to Vaish. But two of your previous statements are incorrect, Idonan. First: we are not of equal power, you showed that by coming to me for an alliance. Second: Vaish might be a danger to you, but they are not to us. Even the Jotnar fear our navy and stout warriors.”

  Goki’s words were somewhat laughable. The man had sent assassins to kill Madalena’s father and then changed their mission to kill me. He knew I was a danger, and he had tried to eliminate me before I eventually came for him.

  There had not been many conflicts between Vaish and Waymund in the last five years, but every one that has occurred had ended with a Vaish victory. Our intelligence wasn’t perfectly accurate, but we guessed with confidence that both Idonana and Waymund were about the same power, and it was about half of what Vaish was before Sivaha had submitted to me.

  The actor playing King Toriton’s face turned red, and he opened his mouth to blurt out an angry retort, but Aasne placed her hand on his arm, and the man closed his mouth and turned to her.

  “We are delighted to be in your presence and for this opportunity for an alliance,” she said to King Goki and Queen Leara. “I am sure all this will work itself out after my marriage. I have brought gifts for your people, can my handmaidens distribute them?” She gestured to the two leather cases at Sivaha and Madalena’s feet, and the Waymund rulers looked at them.

  “What are they?” Leara said, and her blue eyes narrowed suspiciously.

  “They are flowers from my homeworld,” Aasne said as Sivaha and Madalena both opened the cases.

  “We have flowers on this world,” Leara said as she gave my three wives a confused look. “Why do we need these?”

  “It is a tradition that the bride gives flowers to the groom’s party. You do not need to accept them, but they are my favorite, and it adds a festive atmosphere to a ceremony which is often dour when it has been arranged without a love-match.”

  “Fine,” Goki said as he waved his hands. “Give them your flowers and then let us begin. Toriton has bored me with his whining.”

  “You disrespect Odin?” Toriton seethed, but Goki let out a snort.

  “What will you do, Idonan? Whine about me mistreating our god or you again? Look around you. I outnumber you five to one. I did not even care about taking your pulse weapons. My Valkyries will slaughter your group in half a moment. Just sit there and choke on your tears.”

  The actor’s face reddened again, and the Idonan guards sitting a few seats behind me shifted in their seats. I realized that the Waymund king was trying to annoy Toriton with his words now, and it was even more apparent now that Goki didn’t intend for their to be any sort of alliance. He just wanted to get the marriage over with so he could kill Toriton and then make moves to absorb Idonan.

  Goki and Leara turned and walked up the stairs of the dais toward his throne. The tall man took his seat on the massive chair, and then his queen pulled a pillow out from around the back of the throne and kneeled on it at his feet. The Waymund king looked incredibly bored already, and he shook his head when Madalena and Sivaha began to distribute their flowers to the gathered Waymund men and women sitting across the aisle from us.

  Skald Yanirk cleared his throat and began to walk up the steps of the dais. Everyone turned their attention to the mustached man, and he gestured for Goki and Leara’s son to walk up the stairs and join him on one of the middle steps. On closer examination, the young man wasn’t really more than a boy, and he actually didn’t look at all like Leara. I wondered if the woman was Goki’s second or third wife, since she did seem to be much younger than her husband.

  As soon as the boy joined Yanirk on the steps, Madalena and Sivaha finished distributing their white petaled flowers, and they returned to the front of our pews to flank Aasne. The skald waited for them to take their places, and then he gestured for the auburn-haired woman to approach.

  Sivaha and Madalena removed her black robe, gave her a bouquet from one of the cases, and then reached to the rear of her white dress so that they could release the train of the garment. They both helped her walk up the stairs and then two meters to her left with their heads bowed.

  Now all three of my wives were just a meter or so away from the king and queen of Waymund, and none of the other guards were close by.

 
“Nordar,” Yanirk began as he raised his arms to the audience. “We are here today to celebrate not solely the joining together of two of our people, but an alliance of clans that we hope will last for generations. When the All Father decided to hang himself from Yggdrasil, he did it to increase his--”

  “Just get on with the submission,” Goki interrupted the skald, and the mustached man turned up toward his king with a surprised look on his face.

  “My lord, we were just speaking of Odin, and--”

  “We all know of Odin,” Goki interrupted. “He is king over Asgard, and I am king here. Tell the girl to submit to my son so we can begin the feast.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Yanirk said with a solemn bow, and then he turned back to the audience and forced a painful smile on his face.

  I didn’t know if I actually believed in Odin, Freyja, or any of the other Nordar gods, but I might have been starting to believe in the All Father’s power, and I knew that Madalena and Sivaha believed in Odin with every cell of their being. Goki had just shown the god a tremendous amount of disrespect, and I felt the echoes of outrage pour from the crew that I shared a bond with.

  And the other people attending the ceremony also didn’t seem very pleased.

  “Aasne Idonan, please begin your submission to Alrick Waymund,” the skald said as he gestured to the boy.

  “Yes, of course,” Aasne said, and then she looked around the room. “Who will witness?”

  “I will witness,” a chorus of voices answered her, and I fought against a smile. It was a tradition amongst all the Nordar that everyone around would witness a submission, so all the Waymund Valkyries and guards had answered her request.

  Just as we planned.

  Aasne kneeled down on the steps in her pristine white dress and then held her flowers up to her bosom as she batted her long eyelashes at the boy standing before her.

  “Do you have a knife, my lord?” she asked.

  “Y-y-yes,” he stuttered as he pulled one from his belt, flipped it in his palm, and then handed it to her.

  “Thank you,” she said as she held it next to her bouquet. “I am Aasne Idonan. Eldest offspring of King Toriton Idonan. Eldest offspring of King Cantra Idonan. Eldest offspring of Queen Lelhaan Idonan.”

  “She is Aasne Idonan. Eldest offspring of King Toriton Idonan. Eldest offspring of King Cantra Idonan. Eldest offspring of Queen Lelhaan Idonan,” the crowd of three-hundred Nordar repeated.

  My green-eyed wife smiled at the crowd and then raised her bouquet high above her head. The movement was smooth, but it was unusual, so everyone in the audience fixed their eyes on the bundle of white flowers.

  “I am Aasne Idonan. Queen of the Vaish Blood Overlord Clan and this is the last day that the Waymund clan will exist.”

  Then her bouquet exploded in a blinding white light.

  And so did the small flowers that everyone in the opposite pews held.

  The chamber filled with shouts of surprise, but then my warriors had aimed their weapons, and our pulse rifle fire quickly turned the shouts of surprise into screams of death.

  Chapter 14

  We focused on the Valkyries first since the group of fifty women was the most dangerous. Even though they were mostly blinded by Aasne’s flash grenade, they were already aiming their weapons toward the pews where we sat.

  Our blue pulse bullets streamed from the stands like a tidal wave, and the cluster of the valkyries in the adjacent corner shrieked as their bodies were filled with burning bits of energy. A few of them got shots off, but they died before they could aim, and then I twisted my rifle around to take out the next group of warrior women as my own group of warriors tried to change position so that we were across the aisle.

  The next group of valkyries were trying to return fire as their aegis armor covered their bodies. Some of their armor caught the pulse bullets we fired, but it was a rainstorm of blue energy coming at them, and every bullet that bounced off hardened armor was accompanied by five which tore through soft flesh.

  We were still surrounded on all sides by Waymund warriors though, and the world seemed to slow to a crawl as I let the monster in my soul change my body into a weapon of war. My spine cracked and grew as I sent a burst of pulse rifle fire into a warrior in the stands that was reaching for his shotgun. I aimed down my holographic sight and took the head off a valkyrie trying to get a target on Lux as my shoulders expanded and stretched my uniform. My feet pushed up to fill my boots as I twisted away from a shotgun blast which almost disintegrated my chest, and my vision twisted to the yellow and red tiger view as I spat my human teeth out in the face of a warrior that tried to tackle me.

  I let go of my rifle, grabbed my new knife, and slammed it into my attacker’s stomach. The blade was long enough to pass out his back, and I ripped it across and felt the tip sever his spine. He fell with a scream of horror, and I shoulder checked another warrior before slamming my blade into his inner thigh. He tried to bring his shotgun around to shoot me at point blank range, but I twisted my knife sideways, lifted the handle, snatched the man over my head, and then whipped my blade forward to send him sprawling into another group of warriors.

  I dove below the pews as all attention turned to the massive tiger-man in the throne room, and I remembered that I had my aegis. As soon as I thought about the armor, I felt the warm metal begin to slide down my body, and I crawled across the floor as my crew laid cover fire over me.

  Then the aegis filled my mouth, nose, and eyes, and I forced myself to breathe through the metal.

  I rolled out the other side of the pews and slashed my long blade across the hamstring of an aegis wearing guard. I half expected the armor to stop my blade, but it cut through like butter, and the man screamed as he fell on top of me. I ended his life with a stab to his temple, and then I crouched beside the pew and looked for my next target.

  The throne room was pure chaos.

  My crew was grouped together on the far side of the pews, and they laid down suppressive pulse rifle fire in seemingly all directions at once. We were still incredibly outnumbered by Waymund, and a few incoming shots from the direction of the exit doors tore into the ranks of the elite Idonan guards who had accompanied us. Amidst this combat, Dragon had transformed into his lizard-man form and was wreaking havoc among the Waymund where their numbers were thickest.

  I glanced at the raised throne dais and saw Madalena and Sivaha with their aegis armor on, and they sprayed their weapons across the hallway toward the double doors. Aasne had taken position behind the massive throne, and I could see her hold her twin pistols on Goki, Leara, and Alrick.

  As I watched, Aasne turned her head to check on my two other wives, and Goki darted forward. His hand closed over the barrel of one of the young woman’s left pistol, and she slammed the butt of her other pistol down into his face. The taller man took the hit like a champ though, and he tackled the green-eyed woman to the ground.

  Madalena and Sivaha were facing the door, and I knew that they hadn’t seen Aasne lose control of the situation.

  I slid my knife back into my belt sheath in one fluid movement and lunged to my feet. The throne was a good twenty meters away from me, and I was going to have to run through the chaos of my crew shooting at the well-dressed Waymund family members, but I couldn’t let Goki gain control of the situation. If he wrestled one of the pistols away from Aasne, he could put a bullet in the back of Madalena or Sivaha.

  So I pushed my legs to sprint as a roar escaped my throat.

  A flurry of pulse rifle bullets slammed into the wall next to me, but I kept running.

  A Waymund warrior with a shotgun jumped in front of my charge, and a spray of shotgun pulse bullets hit the floor in front of me. I kept running and felt the shooter’s body break in a dozen places when I shoulder checked him.

  A Waymund valkyrie had somehow made it between Goki and me, and she raised her rifle to put a bullet through my tiger-skull. I ducked a fraction of a second before her weapon sprayed blue fire, and t
hen I hit her with an uppercut to the chin. Her aegis armor was able to stop most firearms that weren’t armor piercing, and I guessed it would have shrugged off most melee type of attacks, but I felt her jaw, teeth, and skull crush under the impact of my fist, and I kept running as she fell over dead.

  I hit the stairs as King Goki pinned one of Aasne’s arms under her leg and then wrestled a pistol out of her other hand. He turned the weapon around in his palm to fire at her, but that was the instant that I leaped halfway up the stairs and brought my claws down on his arm. The aegis armor, skin, muscle, and bone beneath parted as if I had sliced it with a sword, and he screamed as his wrist fell away from the blood spraying stump.

  “Sit down!” I growled at him as I kicked his chest and sent him tumbling down the stairs behind the throne. His arm sprayed blood everywhere as he hit the bottom of the dais, but I could see that his aegis was already moving to seal the wound so that he wouldn’t bleed out.

  “Adam!” Aasne screamed, and I turned to her just in time to see that Leana had grabbed the pistol out of her husband’s severed hand.

  Then the Waymund queen pointed the weapon at the prone Aasne.

  I didn’t have time to knock the weapon out of her hand, but my instinct was to protect my wife. Before I could even think about what I was doing, I had jumped to the side and the pulse weapon barked just as soon as I got in the way.

  I felt the bullets hit my stomach, and I prayed that they didn’t penetrate my body. Pain briefly flared through my abdomen, but then my left hand had wrapped around the barrel of the weapon, and I yanked it toward me as I brought my right hand around to grab the Waymund queen by the throat.

  I lifted her off the ground, and I saw her blue eyes widen with panic under her aegis mask.

  “I’m fine!” Aasne called out, but I almost couldn’t hear her over the sound of the gun battle and the rage that screamed through my blood.

  “What are you?” she gasped as she kicked her feet through the empty air and tried to pry my hands from her throat.

  “King Vaish,” I growled. “Avatar of Odin and blessed by Freyja. Now, you can sit here quietly, and watch me butcher your people, or you can surrender.”