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Mirabella dashed over to him, ignoring the other two muscle-heads who were just now turning around to see what had happened to their Captain. Furx’s body was sprawled on the floor with the enormous alien looming over it. The thing’s slitted nostrils widened, taking in the scent of his spilled blood…or possibly the scent of Mirabella’s fresh wound.
Now that he wasn’t in the way, Lynx could see the black body armor which was actually just part of its exoskeleton. The points of its spine were clearly visible as it swung its elongated skull from side to side, assessing its enemies, its blood-drop eyes narrowing.
Lynx felt sick. The Honey Pot had been too good. It hadn’t just drawn him and Saxon and Mirabella over—it had drawn a far more dangerous enemy than Captain Furx and his band of muscle-heads could ever be.
It had drawn a battalion of Skulls.
FORTY-TWO
MIRI
Miri rushed over and sat on Lynx’s lap, getting as close to the big Shifter as she could. She put her arms around his neck and wished desperately he could put his arms around her as well, but his hands were manacled to the chair he sat in and the man who had locked him up had the key.
She still wasn’t sure what had happened to Captain Furx. Why had he stopped talking and collapsed suddenly? And why hadn’t anyone shot at her when she rushed over to Lynx?
Then she turned her head and horror washed over her.
An enormous, shiny black shape was looming over the men who had been on either side of Captain Furx. As she watched, it extended one six-fingered hand tipped with long, knife-like claws and thrust it—almost causally—through one of the guard’s thick throats.
A gout of blood erupted and pattered down on the expensive inlaid floor, like crimson rain.
“Hey—you can’t—” the other guard began but then the tip of the alien creature’s tail lashed out as fast as a scorpion striking and speared directly into his mouth. His eyes rolled up and he began to thrash and gag as streams of blood dripped down his chin. The tip of the tail burst through the back of his head, shattering it like a fragile eggshell and spraying gray brain matter everywhere.
“Fucking Skulls,” Miri heard Saxon mutter. “The Honey Pot called them too.”
Skulls? Miri stared at the creature’s elongated skull with sick fascination. So these were the creatures who had killed her father. She’d heard so much about them and yet had never actually seen one—or a picture of one. She could well believe that this monstrosity would be happy to rape, murder, and eat any hapless victims it came across—not necessarily in that order.
“This must be the scout—they always send in a scout first,” Saxon muttered. “If we can somehow kill it, the rest will leave—they won’t think it’s worth the trouble.”
“Yes, but how?” Lynx murmured back.
“I’m going to do a full-Shift,” Saxon growled.
“What? No!” Lynx stiffened and Miri felt every muscle in his body go tense. “You won’t be able to come back from that, Brother!”
“I know. Doesn’t fucking matter,” Saxon rumbled. “It’s the only way I’ll have the strength to break these fucking manacles—my Wolf won’t have a problem with them. Won’t have a problem with the fucking Skulls scout either,” he added.
“Then I’m Shifting with you,” Lynx returned.
“No!” Saxon snapped. “Fucking stay in your right mind. You have to protect our female. And you have to commit Shai’ki’rai for both of us. Just make sure Mirabella is safe first.”
“Saxon—” Lynx began but the other Monstrum shook his head.
“No time to argue. Keep our female safe, Brother!”
And he began to change.
FORTY-THREE
MIRI
“Hold on to me, my Lady and don’t look,” Lynx ordered her, but Miri felt powerless not to watch. She still sat in Lynx’s lap but her attention was divided between what was happening to Saxon and the Skulls scout.
Now that Furx and his men were dead, the scout was sniffing around eagerly for fresh prey, its slitted nostrils widening rhythmically. It was already moving towards them. But at the same time, Saxon was changing almost too fast for Miri to see.
For the first time Miri witnessed a full-Shift and it was something to behold. Saxon had already had a wolf’s head and pelt, but he had retained his humanoid form during his previous half-Shift. Now he shed what traces of humanity he had left and went full animal.
In the blink of an eye, his hands and feet became paws and his knees bent the other way. At the same time he began to grow at an enormous rate. He burst out of his clothes and a moment later the iron manacles that bound his wrists and ankles shattered like brittle glass. Miri ducked instinctively to avoid the flying metal shards.
Then a perfectly enormous wolf which seemed to fill the entire room was shaking out its coat and eyeing the Skulls scout. The scout looked small beside it, though the strange alien warrior had appeared enormous to Miri before.
