"I would run a marathon right now if it meant getting me and my friends safe."
"A marathon?" he asks, furrowing his brow.
"Don't worry about it. Let’s just keep looking for?—"
The words die in my throat.
The air pressure drops, my ears popping.
A stench blasts through the trees, a rancid smell of decay. The intermittent bird calls cease, replaced by a dead quiet that sends the hair on the back of my neck up.
“This isn’t good,” I murmur.
“Stay behind me,” Vael rumbles.
For once, I’m happy to do as he says, because if this is the native whatever-the-fuck the voice warned us about, I can’t do shit. I grip the pokey branch in my hands tighter, because I might not be able to take on an alien moose, but I sure as shit can go down fighting.
In front of us, the brush begins to churn.
A wet clicking sound starts, the sick scent of rot growing stronger. I gulp.
The bushes explode outward.
A creature slithers into the center of our path, and it’s a fucking nightmare come to life.
A segmented torso covered in black insect-like plating, easily the size of a city bus, stands before us, and instead of legs, it has tentacles.
“Oh, fuck that,” I breathe.
“I will not,” Vael tells me. “Why would you say such a thing?”
I roll my eyes. We’re gonna have to work on human slang, I fear.
Translucent tentacles writhe under its body, tearing up the ground as it drags its weight forward.
It turns its head towards us.
“Ew,” I whisper, clutching my stick.
It doesn't have eyes. It has a singular vertical slit that pulses with a sickly green light, resting right above what must be its mouth. Lined with twenty rows of spinning needle-sharp silver teeth. Definitely not my idea of a good time. The green light flares, illuminating a blood-splattered remnant of a Roth supply crate dangling from one of its tentacles.
Fuck.
Anger sears through me, because we needed that goddamned crate, and mister non-human centipede had to come crawling along and fuck my shit up.
The mouth opens, letting out a deafening screech that hurts my ears.
I flinch, trying to figure out what the fuck I’m going to do against this alien freak of nature.
Vael doesn't hesitate.
Springing to action, he drops his supply pack, his gorgeous ruby-red wings snapping out to their fullest. He steps directly in front of me, his fangs fully bared.
If there weren’t a nasty bug thing in front of us, it would be kind of hot.
Maybe this is the disassociation people keep talking about.
"Poppy," he roars over the creature's screech. "Get behind the tree line. Now."
