They were cloaked, now. Shunning the boots as too slow to put on, they helped a stumbling Zyair down to street level.
According to the navcube’s projection, I was almost there…
Rhodes stiffened. Through his eyes, I saw movement in the blowing sand—and Nirzks stepped through it. More than I could count.
No.
No time to wonder how they’d found the Drakes so fast. I was running now, driven to get there, even though I was one sporadically scaly human against monsters…
Rhodes and Xandros dropped Zyair and sprang into action, starting to shift through their cloaks, but the Nirzks fired the nets at point blank range. There was no escaping the sticky strands. The electric current zapped my Drakes until they dropped to their knees, lips peeled from teeth as they struggled to stay conscious.
Their pain slowed my run to a stagger. I came around a corner and skidded to a stop—the Nirzks looked up from the nets. My Drakes’ horror permeated me as I raised my chin and glared into the surprised gazes of the manticores.
At that moment, from the swirling sand, strode Brentoq.
She was even scarier in real life than she’d been through Zyair’s eyes. Taller than a Drake, with muscles bulging beneath her fur. My eyes burned at the stench that the blowing wind whirled my way—and I sneezed, before I lowered my hood.
“Well, well, what have we here? A puny human female,” she stated in a heavily accented version of Primal. Her squeaky voice was raised to carry over the wind, and I understood it, but only barely. There was not one ounce of compassion in those cold, yellow orbs. When one of the males raised his phaser, aiming it at me, she reached out to push it back down, her lip curled in derision. “Move along, little worm. We have things to do.”
I straightened as I faced up to her, and called through the gusting wind. “You have something that belongs to me.”
I caught the first gleam of interest in her eyes.
“You mean nothing to us, human.” Zyair was on his knees beneath the net, and every muscle shook. His expression was cold, but I saw the gleam of horror in his eyes as they moved from me, to Brentoq. And a twisted, tormented mixture of pain and lust pulsed from him.
I forced myself to push past it. I didn’t dare take my eyes off Brentoq. The wind had turned foul with her gaseous scent, it couldn’t blow hard or fast enough to dispel it.
I gagged. “Did you just fart?”
Her eyes narrowed. “What is a fart?”
“That smell.” I wrinkled my nose and blinked sand from my eyes.
“Yes, my regular pheromonal expulsions are most alluring,” she agreed absently as she scanned all three Drakes. “What are these Drakes to you?”
I glared at her. “They are mine. They are allowed to smell me. And only me.”
“They most definitely are not,” Brentoq stated. “I went to a lot of trouble to lure his brothers into this trap. That makes them mine.” She grinned, revealing glistening fangs. “And I am going to enjoy sucking them dry, in every way imaginable.”
“They. Are. Mine,” I insisted.
“She is delusional,” Rhodes growled. The Nirzk controlling his net sent another pulse of electricity through it, and the dark Drake’s lips peeled back in a snarl as he was driven to the ground.
I raised my chin and met Brentoq’s puzzled gaze. “I challenge you for them.”
“No,” Zyair groaned.
Brentoq eyed me. “You’d fight me, for them?”
As I stood there with my cloak blowing in the wind, I couldn’t have looked like less of a match for her. She was three times my size, and armed with muscles, claws, knives, and a phaser. As well as farts that could clear a battlefield.
But I was the only chance my Drakes had.
“What have you got to lose?” I dared her. My pulse was leaping like a startled deer, and my skin prickled beneath my wind-whipped cloak. I hoped that meant what I needed it to mean. Just in case, I rolled my arms against the blasting wind to drape the fabric over them, but managed to drop my knife from the forearm sheath to my hand, and let her see the gleam of the blade.
Her eyes ignited, and she tossed aside the phaser. “This should be entertaining,” she said, her grin revealing her wicked fangs. “Think I’ll drain you dry in front of your Drakes. It will be fun to see them squirm.”
Xandros surged forward, but the Nirzk with the net controlszapped him. He fought it with everything he had, muscles quivering through his torn cloak, but the net won. His legs collapsed beneath him. His face matched Zyair’s for sheer desperation.
