Page 37 of The Arabis Triad

They bolted out of the ship and through the dense underbrush. The trail was longer than he remembered it being. Every leaf he had to brush away, every branch he jumped over only slowed him down. Sweat poured down his forehead, stinging his eyes, but he gripped his sword and pulser harder and pushed on.

Paxt burst out onto the beach and Coltan skidded closely behind him. Water lapped along the shoreline. The suns beat down overhead. A breeze caressed his skin.

The shore was totally empty.

Pat knelt down to the last place he’d seen Ashir and Evelyn, his expression burning. When he looked at Coltan, his eyes pulsed with anger. “They have been hurt.”

Stunned, Coltan stumbled to where Paxt pointed. Splatters of blood stained the pale pink sand, sullying its beauty with violence. There were divots and gouges surrounding the area. Whoever had been here, had taken their family.

Coltan curled his fingers around the hilt of his sword. “They will die.”

Paxt placed his hand on Coltan’s shoulder. “We will get them back.”

Coltan could only nod. Anger pulsed like a writhing, living entity in his blood, barely contained and looking for an excuse to break free. If he didn’t get a rein on his emotions, he wouldn’t be good for anything. Not for what he had to do.

Paxt slid the flexi-screen from a hip pocket and accessed the drone data. Several dots moved across the terrain, racing toward an area that was bleeding red unlike any drone-data reading he’d seen before. As he watched, the color and size grew in intensity.

“What does that indicate?” Coltan asked.

“That stationary one is the crystal. The other two are Evelyn and Ashir. Whatever is happening to them, the power of the crystal is increasing the closer they get.” As they watched, the light indicating the crystal grew larger with each blip.

A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. This was so not good. “We have no time to waste, brother.”

“This way.” Paxt started off through the trees.

Together, they followed a path that led them toward the blinking dots. Coltan noted broken twigs and leaves, indicating that something had travelled before them. He could only hope that Ashir and Evelyn had not suffered. He couldn’t bear the thought.

The deeper they jogged though the underbrush, the more the heat cloyed around him. Perspiration ran over Coltan’s skin and down his back in rivulets. The humidity was punishing. If only he could backtrack to a few hours before, when they were swimming and carefree and blissfully unaware of what would happen in their immediate future.

What made it even worse, in a way, was that there was so much at stake. Not just their lives, but Evelyn’s, and the entire future of their Homeland. There was only one mate for a Trio. There would be no other for them. No mate. No children. Only empty days without family to fill the missing gap of happiness.

Coltan was so caught up in his thoughts that he almost fell over Paxt when he crouched against a low rise. He caught himself in time and settled next to his brother. He followed the line to where Paxt pointed. Paxt’s hand on his shoulder stopped him from lurching to his feet at the sight.

A scaled one had Evelyn’s limp form thrown over its shoulder. Two others had Ashir’s struggling body between them. Ashir snarled at them as he tried to pull free from the bindings at his wrists and ankles.

A scaled one hit Ashir over his head with a truncheon. His brother’s body went limp, fresh blood coating over the dried remains of a previous injury on the side of his face.

The scaled ones hissed and clacked to each other. One of them came over and issued some kind of order to the others, then they walked through a clump of leaves and disappeared.

Coltan looked at Paxt, eyebrow raised. Paxt indicated that they reverse their steps. Coltan followed until Paxt hunched down behind a thick trunk.

“They’ve gone into a cave.” Paxt held up the flexi-screen. Indeed, the topography indicated they’d gone beneath the ground, quite a distance it looked like.

“I didn’t even see the entrance,” Coltan admitted.

“It was hidden very well. Now we know what they’ve been doing. They haven’t just been sitting around, there’s something going on underground. See?” Paxt said.

The light had stopped blinking, and was now a solid dot. Fringes of magenta and purple ringed the red.

“The colors of the crystal, but it shouldn’t be able to do that to the screen,” Paxt said.

“There are many things I didn’t think possible before we met Evelyn, but the Ozar spoke of a bigger plot. They must be doing something and it involves our Evelyn. The energy reading is growing. It looks like they’re harnessing it somehow and it’s growing the closer Evelyn is taken to the crystal. It seems Rujali was correct when he said the scaled ones need human females. If this is what I think it means, then the entity they also spoke about needs the energy to come through into this dimension,” Paxt said.

“We have to stop it then, brother. Whatever it is, it can’t be any good. For any of us.”

Paxt’s eyes went dark and fierce. He didn’t wear that expression often, but when he did, he was set to unleash the hells. “This is a battle bigger than you and me and our family, Coltan. Even our Homeland. It might mean the destruction of our entire universe if we don’t stop them now.”

In the pit of his stomach, Coltan knew he spoke the truth. They had to attempt something to stop whatever was happening, but it could mean they would never come out. There might be no happy ending to this fight.

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