Page 28 of Stealing Jia

Trayon grinned, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth. “You cannot defeat me soft skin.”He took a step forward.

Voices in my head cried, “No hurt Tiny!”

Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat!Web balls hammered Trayon, knocking him back against the console.Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat! Splat!His sword arm was glued to the metal. Trayon roared his displeasure.

“Who did that?”Sharp claws dug into my shoulder. “Ouch!” I turned my head. Bright orange eyes peered at me. The little guy had a foxlike face, furry black body with bat wings and a long serpentine tail. How had I missed him? “You can shoot web balls?”

“Us do.” Two small, golden tarantulas tumbled down from my head and perched on my nose. “Him Draconic. Him calledAdoz. Me LooLoo and she LeeLee. We Tabors. Rodan not like others. Different. We named him Tiny. We friends.”

“Free me,” Trayon bellowed.

“Not until I have your word you won’t hurt the kid.”

“I am bound by our laws.”

“Why don’t you use this time to think about how wrong it is to murder babies.”

A deep growl rumbled in Trayon chest as he ripped the webbing with his lethal fangs.

I grabbed the can of mace off my belt. Did it work on Askole warriors too?

Trayon broke free.

Guess I’d find out. Before I could pull the trigger Adoz roared, and flames spewed from his mouth.

Snikt. Schlik.Schlik. Schlik. Schlik.A horned helmet formed around Trayon’s head seconds before the flames hit him.

“No Adoz! Fire bad on spaceships.”

Sure enough, the ship’s automatic fire suppression system kicked in, spraying a thick foam over the room.

“Cazzo.” I wiped the gunk out of my eyes.

His tentacles squirming madly, Trayon spat a bunch of guttural grunts and his furious gaze locked on me.

Merda! He looked like he was ready to kill us all. I looked around frantically. We needed a place to hide.

A gray whirlwind erupted around us. Thirty seconds of falling down an endless black hole and poof! We were standing in what I assumed was the Askole’s mess hall. Two heavily armed warriors stared at us in surprise.

“Oh no. Oh no,” the snake cried.

Guttural grunts, groans, and clucks sound from the speaker system.

A warrior lunged for me.

I pressed the red button on my mace and sprayed him in the face.

He reared back with a roar of pain, tripped over a chair and landed face first in a platter of bloody worms.

I smiled. Mace, the great equalizer.

The other warrior charged me.

Adoz blasted the Askole with fire.

I groaned as the fire suppression system immediately spewed a thick white foam over the room. To make things even more fun the spinning vortex from hell appeared again. There was a flash of black and we appeared in a small storeroom.

My knees threatening to buckle, I leaned against the wall. “Who? How?”I took a deep breath and tried to calm my shattered nerves.“What just happened? Who did that?”

---