“Hurry!” the auburn-haired Drake urged as I took aim with the laser. Every muscle in his lean body quivered with tension. “I am needed.”
“That’s stating the obvious,” I muttered at him through clenched teeth. Considering there were four Taziers and only two of his brothers… My pulse pounded at the crashing and grunts behind me, and I pushed the laser hard, trying to ignore the heavy breathing near my right breast.
“Almost there…” Yani said. The cutter worked furiously as the links turned molten, and then, they parted.
That arm dropped, and the fingertips sprouted vicious talons. Yani leaned over to add her efforts to my own. The links bent?—
With a savage jerk, Rhodes snapped them. The effort swung him straight into me, and I toppled off the ladder.
I never hit the ground. A strong arm caught me up and swept me to the side, placing me on my feet even while he surged out the cage door.
Something grabbed my arm through the bars—I twisted to see Senaik. At least, I thought it was him—because he was partially transformed. His face was a horror of long jaws and sharp teeth, with dark scales chasing over the skin.
He sprouted talons from his fingertips, and sank them into me. I gasped in pain, but wrenched my other arm around, and aimed the cutter straight at his face.
He howled as the laser opened a red line along one cheek. And then he snarled as something slammed into him from behind.
Zyair. He sank his talons into the wing membranes of the Tazier as they hauled him away from me.
Yani pulled me to the back of the cage and ripped the sleeve off her coveralls to bind my wounds. I ignored the red soaking through my shirt. My eyes never left the Drakes.
In such confined space, the Taziers couldn’t embrace their full beast. They had, however, achieved partial transformations—their jaws lengthened, armed with sharp teeth, and their arms and legs rippled with enlarged muscles as well as scaled skin.
Even though the three Raptor Drakes had expanded their canines, their faces remained human. With the manacles and wing restraints, the best transformations they could achieve were a few scales on forearms and their talons.
Despite those limitations, it seemed the Taziers had been right to fear their captives. The Raptor Clan members were lethal, even in their humanoid form.
Xandros slung one Drake around by the ankle, muscles bulging as he slammed the half-shifted Tazier into the walls of the storage bay with enough force that it bent the panels.
It did slightly more damage to the Tazier. Xandros dropped the limp body and moved in on the two that were attacking Rhodes.
Or rather, trying to attack him. Rhodes moved like lightning, zipping in to strike with his talons, and then vanishing before either of his opponents could lay a single one on him. He wasmore finesse than brute force, and his expression never varied as he spun to trade blows, and disappeared again.
Zyair was dancing with Senaik. And dancing was the right description—they both moved so fluidly, with the Tazier using his wings to lift into the air as much as moving on the ground. They were well matched and used their talons like ten knives.
It seemed Senaik was hiding secrets—two new Taziers arrived. Where had they come from? They both raised phaser rifles, trying to get a bead on the fighters.
Xandros whirled away from the one he’d been mauling and lunged into the new arrivals with a roar. Phaser beams shot into the infrastructure, leaving smoking, half-melted metal in their wake.
“They know we’re on aspaceship, right?” Yani hissed in dismay, just as they abandoned the phasers for teeth and talons.
I eyed the weapons lying on the floor, but they were well out of reach and at the feet of the slashing fighters. It was five to three, and although the Raptors were skilled, they’d been hung up for an extended time before this battle…
With my back against the bars, I felt useless. Yani and I would last seconds out there, but I desperately wished to help.
Then my eyes fell on another phaser rifle lying near the wall that was well away from the fighters. If I could just get to it…
Yani grabbed my arm as I moved away. I met her panicked gaze.
“I have to help,” I said.
She followed my gaze to the rifle. “It won’t penetrate their scales.”
“It might. They aren’t in full beast form,” I pointed out.
Her mouth twisted, but she let me go.
I waited until Rhodes closed with the two who were trying to take him down. He slammed talons deep through the scales of one, carrying it back into the wall before the muscles of his shoulders strained. When he pulled his talons out, the body dropped.
