Page 4 of Mated to the Monster God
It screeches, pacing the shoreline, claws scraping bark. It doesn't want to. But it’s already tasted my fear—smelled the panic sweat dripping from my pores—and now its need to kill is bigger than its fear.
It leaps.
The watereruptsas its weight crashes in. Mud flies. Froth churns. I dive sideways, submerging to the waist and splashing backward.
The Hooknose wades deeper, eyes wild. Then… stillness.
A second.
Then ten and the water boils.
“Gotcha,” I whisper.
Dozens of dark, writhing shapes uncoil from the muck. Like thick black noodles, but with mouths. Round, pink, fanged mouths. Protean slugs. The little bastards smell blood in the water—and that bird’s practically a buffet.
The Hooknose squawks, high and panicked, slashing at the surface. But the slugs are already in its feathers, crawling intocrevices, latching on. It thrashes violently, wings beating the air like thunderclaps. One of the slugs latches onto its eye. It screams.
I dive beneath the surface.
The cold wraps around me like chains. My medkit drags at my back. I paddle hard, pushing through tangling weeds and greasy muck. I hear the Hooknose dying above—its screeches turning guttural, strangled.
I surface twenty meters away, chest burning, gasping. I drag myself onto a muddy rise, hands clawing at vines. My left arm burns. Not from exertion—no,somethingis wrong.
I roll onto my back, blinking water from my eyes.
That’s when I see it.
“Shit—shit—shit—no no no no?—”
A Protean slug clings to my forearm, fat and pulsing, black and wet. Its fanged mouth is latched just below my elbow, feeding. Not just drinking—burrowing. I scream and dig my fingers into its slick flesh, trying to pry it loose.
It writhes but doesn’t let go.
I yank open the medkit and grab my laser scalpel. Thumb the trigger. A thin beam of white-hot light hums to life. I press the edge to the slug.
The pain hitsinstantly.
Not just in my arm. Not just the bite.
Everynervein my body lights up. My teeth clench so hard I hear something crack. My legs seize. My vision white-outs with agony.
I drop the scalpel, screaming.
But the scream echoes wrong.
It’s not mine.
It'sinme.
“Stop.”
The voice is not sound. It’s a vibration inside my skull, like someone playing a cello string across the inside of my brain.
“Do not hurt me. I am not your enemy.”
My body freezes.
Eyes wide, heart hammering, I stare at the slug. Still attached. Still feeding. But now… watching?
