Page 33 of Resisting the Alien Rider

It wasn’t bark peeling away from the tree, I realized with dawning horror. It was some sort of animal or insect, craggy and brown to camouflage with the trunk. The main, flat portion of its body was easily as wide as Garrek’s back, and it rose, spider-like, on ten long and spindly legs.

Now I was running, too, following Garrek. Not that I was capable of even climbing to the first branch on this towering tree. I could only stand there and watch.

Garrek was nearly halfway to Killian. Killian still hadn’t noticed the tree bark tarantula. He only saw Garrek pursuing him.

And he started to climb higher.

The creature, lured by the scent of the defiant child who’d just disturbed its slumber, began to follow, its sickening legs picking easily over the bark and branches.

“No, Killian!” I screamed. Garrek swore and started climbing faster. As his hands and feet scrabbled for purchase, his tail smashed down into his boot and pulled out his knife.

He hurled the knife, and it was like he’d hurled my heart right along with it.

My lungs shrivelled when the knife glanced off theshell-like back of the creature. It didn’t even slow it down.

It did, however, send the knife hurtling terrifyingly back towards Garrek’s head. With his hands currently busy making sure he didn’t plummet to his death, all he could do was try to catch the falling blade with his tail.

Which he did, thank God. But not without paying a pretty price. Blood poured from his tail as it slid up the knife to grasp the handle instead of the sharp edge.

Fear, unlike anything I’d ever known, moved through me like poison.

I’d been a nurse. I’d been responsible for people who were in the most dire circumstances of their lives. I’d watched patients slip away even as I did everything I could to save them.

And I’d never before felt quite like this. Never before felt this blinding, mind-smothering, all-consuming terror.

Terror that told me if something happened to either one of them…

I would not fucking be OK.

And something had already happened to one of them. Garrek was bleeding, even as he climbed ever higher in pursuit of Killian and the monster that stalked him.

“Killian!” I tried to call his name, but it came out as nothing more than a strangled squeak. I sucked in a big breath and tried again. “Killian! There’s something on the tree! You need to get down!”

Finally, Killian paused long enough to take stock ofthe scene below. His eyes scanned my taut face, then went to Garrek. I knew the moment he saw that Garrek was injured, because his whole body jolted with a sick sort of awareness.

Then, his eyes went to the trunk.

He saw the thing.

And in a moment that stole my breath from my chest, a moment I knew I’d never forget, he turned his body from the tree.

And jumped.

In his terrified haste, he hadn’t aimed himself at a lower branch. He’d simply hurled himself into empty air.

There was nothing there to catch him.

He fell, and I felt myself falling, too. Like I was in one of those terrible dreams that wouldn’t end until you hit the ground, startling awake the moment your dream-self died.

But it wasn’t a dream, and I watched Killian fall, and it was real.

I started forward as if to catch him, even though I knew I couldn’t, even though I knew it would probably just kill us both.

From his precarious position, Garrek saw it all.

Without even a moment’s hesitation, his tail dropped the knife, relinquishing his only line of defense. And then that tail snapped, broken and bleeding, cracking like a whip through the air.

When it hooked around Killian’s ribs, halting that horrible plunge, I nearly collapsed.

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