Page 12 of The Inheritance
Bear.
I licked my lips, trying to get my mouth to work. “Bear.” I could only manage a whisper. “Come.”
The German Shepherd crawled toward me, pressed against my thigh, and let out a soft whine.
“They left you, too.”
I hugged the dog to me. We sat by the wall and watched the fight tear across the cave. The blurs were so fast. How could anyone move that quickly? It should’ve been biologically impossible.
One of the remaining grey blurs collapsed.
The last grey attacker shot toward us. It took me half a second to realize it wasn’t a coincidence. It was aiming for me.
There was no time to run, no time to do anything. I threw my arm in front of Bear on pure instinct. The grey blur loomed above us… and stopped.
I finally saw it clearly, a tall creature with four arms, wrapped in a tattered grey cloak. Its hands had too many fingers, long and clawed, and each hand clenched a sword. It stared at me with terrifying eyes, huge and round, and its mouth, on the face of white pearlescent skin, was a wide, dark slash filled with nightmarish teeth. A blue blade protruded from its chest.
This is also real.
The grey cloak stretched toward my face, like some strange amoeba, its strands long and viscous.
The blue blade twisted.
The creature spat purple blood and went limp.
The sword slid backward, disappearing into the creature’s body as whoever wielded it pulled it out. The cloaked being fell to the side and slid a few feet down the slope.
A tall figure stood behind it, clad in a shimmering, ice-blue robe. The silhouette looked chillingly human, too tall, with limbs that were too long, but unmistakably familiar. The head was a solid chunk of metal, twisted into a sleek horned shape. The same metal, blue with gold filigree, sheathed their body under the robe. No visible skin. Even the fingers of their right hand, gripping the blue sword, were coated in metal. Their left arm was missing, cut off just below the biceps, and bright red blood spurted from the cut.
None of my briefings had ever mentioned a being that appeared this human. Animals, monsters, inhuman sentients with strange anatomy, vaguely humanoid beings, yes. But never this.
The figure touched their helmet. It split apart and retracted into itself. An older woman looked at me. Her skin was a muted pastel pink in the center of the face, darkening to a vivid turquoise near the hairline. A straight nose with a blunt tip, a narrow-lipped mouth with the same pink lips, and upturned eyes with blue-green irises, slightly too large for an Earth native, but not enough to alarm anyone.
Aside from the skin color, she looked so human, it was terrifying. There were crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes and laugh lines by her mouth. Either the DDC did not know, or they knew and kept it a secret at the highest level.
The woman stared at me. Her eyes were sad and mournful.
I stared back.
She swayed and fell.
What the fuck do I do now?
The sound of hoarse breathing echoed through the cavern.
She saved me. If she hadn’t stabbed the grey attacker, I would be dead.
Another hoarse breath. Another.
Fuck it.
I shifted on all fours and crawled the few feet to the woman.
Her arm was sheared off as if by a razor blade, the cut so precise, it was like an anatomy slide. I could see the bones among the bloody muscle. Blood shot out with every breath.
“We’ll need a tourniquet. Hold on.”
I dug in the pocket of my coveralls, extracted the paracord I always carried, and pulled it loose. Paracord was a shitty way to make a tourniquet, but she was bleeding out and I had nothing else. I folded the paracord lengthwise until I had about a three-foot stretch of cord, wrapped it around what was left of her arm, and pulled it into a knot. The blood was still spurting.
