Page 11 of Alien Devil's Wrath
A skittering in the darkness above brought me back to alertness. I gripped the blade tighter, scanning the rock walls that rose on either side of our camp.
The sound multiplied. Not one source but many, moving across the stone with a distinctive clicking of multiple legs. Something was traveling along the canyon walls above us, and it wasn’t alone.
My muscles went rigid. The depression that had seemed defensible now felt like a trap, walls that provided anchor points for whatever was moving up there.
Thin strands of something caught the firelight. Webbing. Fresh silk stretched between outcroppings, creating a network above our heads.
Shade Crawlers. I’d heard of them in the briefing but seeing the web pattern made my skin crawl. Ambush predators that paralyzed prey before feeding.
I rose silently, blade in hand, every nerve on fire. The skittering grew louder, closer. Multiple bodies moving in coordination.
I prepared to wake Bronwen, to get her behind me before they dropped their webs.
She stirred, not with the jolt of someone startled from sleep, but with a soft sigh of annoyance. Like a child being woken too early for school.
“Oh, honestly,” she muttered, pushing herself up on one elbow and squinting toward the canyon walls. “Not tonight, darlings. I’m tired.”
She fumbled in her pack, pulling out a small wrapped bundle. The skittering above intensified, becoming almost eager.
“Yes, yes, I know,” she said, unwrapping what looked like dried, fibrous material. “Here you go.”
She tossed several pieces up into the darkness. The reaction was immediate. The skittering converged on wherever the objects had landed, the sound changing from hunting to something almost like contentment. Soft clicking sounds drifted down, like the chittering of satisfied insects.
“That’s better,” she said, settling back toward sleep. “Now leave us be. Quietly.”
Within moments, the sounds retreated higher up the canyon walls. The fresh webbing remained, but it was clearly not meant for us. Boundary markers, perhaps. Or just the Crawlers’ way of saying they’d been here.
“Good babies,” she murmured, already curling back toward sleep. “Much better.”
She was asleep again within moments, her breathing deep and even.
I remained standing, blade still gripped in my hand, staring at the canyon walls where nightmare creatures had just accepted treats like trained pets.
“Silk glands,” she mumbled without opening her eyes. “They’re addicted to the pheromones in their old silk. I harvest it from molted shells, from my early territorial surveys. Works better than threats.”
Then she was truly asleep, leaving me to process what I’d just witnessed.
This wasn’t control through dominance or fear. This was negotiation. Trade. She’d spent five years building relationships with every predator on this planet, learning their needs, their wants, their weaknesses.
I settled back against the stone wall, but sleep was impossible now.
She lay curled by the dying fire, soft and vulnerable in appearance, and I knew she was the most dangerous thing on this planet. Not because of her knowledge of poisons or her ability to orchestrate creative deaths. Because of this quiet, absolute authority over creatures that could tear apart a Vinduthi warrior without breaking stride.
I’d faced down armies. Stared into the eyes of killers and never blinked. Survived torture that would have broken lesser men. But the sight of her peaceful smile in the firelight, the casual way she’d turned apex predators into neighborhood strays she fed, unnerved me on a level I didn’t want to examine.
She was unknowable. Unpredictable. A force of nature wearing the face of a human woman.
And somewhere between her cheerful commentary over corpses and her gleeful celebration of inventive violence, between watching her orchestrate death and feed treats to nightmare creatures, my wariness had twisted into something far more dangerous.
I wanted her. Not despite her terrifying nature, but because of it.
The thought should have sent me running into the night. Instead, it settled in my chest, a truth I couldn’t deny. She was a predator who looked like prey, a killer who smiled while she worked, a woman who commanded monsters and called them “darlings” when they obeyed.
She was perfect. Terrifyingly so.
The possessive thought surprised me with its intensity, but I didn’t fight it. Mine, something primal in me growled, and the word felt right in ways that should have worried me more than they did.
I watched her sleep through the long night, my blade across my knees, and let myself imagine what it would be like to have that sharp, terrifying mind focused entirely on me.
