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At last he burst out into the clearing and saw everything at once.
The little girl was there and the canine was beside her, its hackles raised and a low, warning growl rising in its throat. Directly across from them, not five feet away, was the hugest reptile Slade had seen since his master had put him in a fight with a durga from X’line Four back in his Blood Circuit days.
“Fuck,” he whispered hoarsely, taking in the scene. The reptile—“Gator—it’s a gator,” Brandi sent frantically through their link—the reptile looked sleepy enough but Slade was sure that could change at any minute. Its yellow eyes were open and it was watching Emmie. Slade didn’t like how close the little girl was to its lethal jaws—not one fucking bit.
Need to get closer, he thought, edging out into the clearing. Just get a little closer and then try to call her away. Maybe if it’s not hungry it will let her go.
But he didn’t have much hope of that. If gators were anything like durngas—and they looked remarkably similar except for their skin color since durngas were bright red—they were ambush predators. The gator was watching Emmie, sizing her up, getting ready to pounce—he was sure of it.
“Then we have to get her out of there!” Brandi sent through their link, her mental voice panicky and tight. “We have to get her out of there right now!”
“No, wait,” Slade tried to tell her. “Let me get a little closer first. Let me…”
But Brandi was already calling in a low, trembling voice.
“Emmie-bear? Sweetpea?”
Emmie turned her head and a huge smile spread over her face.
“Mommy!” She started to run to Brandi but it seemed like the sudden noise and movement set the giant gator off. With a low, hissing sound, it launched itself from the lake, splashing dirty brown water everywhere.
Desperately, Slade dove for the huge creature and landed on its back. It had to be fourteen feet long, he estimated, and its skin felt like armor plating.
Just as he landed on it, its jaws snapped at Emmie.
The little girl let out a high-pitched shriek—a sound only tiny females could make, Slade thought to himself inanely as he grappled for a hold. Emmie would surely have been snapped in two by the toothy jaws if Charlie hadn’t knocked her over into the grass at just that moment.
The gator’s jaws snapped on air and then Slade threw an arm over its small, yellow eyes, blinding it in the same way he would if he was fighting a durnga. He wrapped his other arm around its thick, scaly throat.
The gator hissed some more and lashed its muscular tail, throwing up sheets of muddy water, trying to buck Slade off its back. But he was damned if he’d let go. Emmie was still lying on her back, not three feet away, screaming, and Charlie was standing valiantly in front of her, barking and growling but the gator still seemed determined to get to one or both of them.
“No! No, not my baby!” Brandi darted forward and grabbed for Emmie but the gator’s thick, muscular tail thrashed, knocking her over into the grass. Now she was inches from the long, snapping jaws, trying to shield her daughter while the dog barked on and on.
“Oh no, you…fucking don’t,” Slade grunted, squeezing the gator’s thick throat, trying to hold it back. He was strong but the animal had to weigh at least a thousand pounds and it was incredibly powerful.
The gator hissed angrily, its fetid breath like rotten meat gusting in his face. Someone was going to lose a hand or a leg or their fucking head if he didn’t end this soon. This damn animal was determined to eat Brandi or Emmie or both of them if it could—they were prey and it was a predator bent on their destruction.
Rage rose in Slade at the thought of his females being threatened. He still had the machete in one hand—the hand that wasn’t locked around the gator’s thick throat. Gripping the hilt, he raised it high and drove the metal down hard into the flat top of the scaly head, hoping to hit the brain.
The gator went wild for a moment, snapping and thrashing so that Slade could hardly hold on. Muddy water went everywhere. Emmie’s high-pitched shriek, the canine’s barking, the gator’s hissing, and Brandi’s screaming melded into a perfect cacophony of noise that he thought would make him go deaf. Gripping the wooden handle hard, he twisted, first to the right, then to the left, pushing in deeper until he felt the metal end of the long knife scraping bone.
At last the gator gave a final shudder and lay still.
“Oh God,” Brandi gasped, her eyes wide, her shaking body still shielding Emmie’s. “Oh God, oh God, oh God!”
“It’s all right…” Slade let go of his hold on the scaly neck and levered himself off its back. “It’s dead—that bastard’s dead,” he told Brandi.
