Page 17 of Monstrous Hunt
:I can get us there in five fucking minutes.:Now the crackling static was gone from Axxol’s deep voice.:No one will track us. I’ll make fucking sure of it.:
:Just adding a warning that we have no idea how she may react to the jump,:Snryx said.:Or if it will cause any damage to the embryo.:
Kroktl smoothed his hand over my hair for several long moments. Petting me. Soothing me—and soothing himself.:What do you think, baby?:
I couldn’t answer him on the grid, so I tried to tell him with my body, remaining loose and relaxed against him. My breathing steady. My lips on his skin.I trust you to decide.
He pressed his lips to my forehead.:Alright. Get us out of here.:
:Everyone press close together,:Axxol said.:I’m going to take us all at the same time.:
:You can do that?:Rizan asked.
I didn’t have to see his face to pick up on his skepticism. Kroktl didn’t say anything, but he shifted me up higher in his arms, tucking my cheek against the base of his throat. Someone pressed against my back, locking his arms around me and Kroktl both. I assumed it was Snryx since his tentacle still touched my cheek. Rizan and Lohr crowded closer too, add their scents and body heat. Rizan smelled like a large, ancient tree after a spring rain. I could almost see a sleepy owl blinking down at me from those branches, though his creature didn’t look anything like it. No surprise to me that Lohr smelled like rich, loamy earth and stone.
Snryx, though, did surprise me. With his calm, clinical manner and metallic implements, I expected him to smell more like a surgery room. Not a bakery. Maybe I was just starving to death, but I swore I could smell brownies fresh from the oven. Right before the acrid burn of ozone assailed my nostrils. I couldn’t see much around so many big, muscled bodies but the flash of blue seared my eyes.
The pit of my stomach dropped like I’d jumped out of the helicopter again. Rippling sensations flashed over my bare skin. Not air exactly, but not water or anything of substance. Kroktl grunted softly, and then I felt the coiling of his muscles against me. His knees bending, absorbing some kind of impact. Blue flickered again and the ground fell away. Up this time, hard and fast enough to snap my head back against Snryx’s shoulder. Sideways. Whirling so fast my hair whipped around my neck. My ears throbbed with pressure but there wasn’t any sound. Even when I opened my mouth. I couldn’t seem to get my brain to focus enough to get the words out.
:Wha…………..at…….:Kroktl’s words stretched out from an impossible distance, even though he was right in front of me.:Fuuuuuuuuck…..:
Blue fire swirled around us faster, a dizzying flash and dance that made icepicks stab into my temples. My lungs burned, my mouth dry, my throat aching like I was screaming.Maybe I am and I can’t hear it.
Flashes too quick for me to identify an image or location. Searing heat. Bone-chilling cold. Just for a second—then blue fire spun again, shooting us to another place. Snapping my head back and forth and side-to-side until I couldn’t even feel my bones any longer. Dissolving. All the particles of my body separated, blowing away like dust in an endless circular blue loop.
:Stoooooooooooop,:Snryx said.:Dyiiiiiiiiiiiing.:
Who? Me?
Maybe. I couldn’t feel them holding me any longer. Couldn’t see anything but painfully bright blue. Burning retinas. Ozone choked me.
While I died on the galaxy’s worst rollercoaster.
9
SNRYX
Every implement I possessed curled around Natalie, trying to keep her alive as Axxol jumped us from the cave through a series of locations. None of which were on Earth, let alone the ocean house that Rizan had clearly marked on the grid.
Her blood congealed in her veins, turning to sludge that her heart couldn’t pump. I injected her with a counteragent and supplied oxygen directly to her brain so she wouldn’t suffer any damage. Pumped her lungs full of air when they collapsed, compressed from the lack of breathable air on a volcanic planet I didn’t even recognize. Then another jump. Her heart pounding out of her chest, arrhythmia from the medication I’d given her that she no longer needed. Counteragent.
Again.
Her cell walls thinned, weakened by the rapid transitions. Her neural network was compromised, millions of synapses winking out of existence. I didn’t know if I could get them back.
Entirely focused on the continuous medical scans of her condition, I didn’t realize we were out of the jump ring until Kroktl bellowed a roar of fury.
:If you leave her to challenge Axxol, shewilldie.:
:I’ll never fucking leave her.:Kroktl snapped like his raptor, vicious jaws and talons braced to kill.:Is she alright?:
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not when I was still running diagnostics. Her natural electrical system had shorted out, the pathways along her nerves blasted apart. Those junctions had to be repaired. Reconnected. One by one.
And the human brain only had a few trillion.
:Theta or delta waves?:Lohr suggested.
:Not enough time. She’ll die before those frequencies have enough time to regenerate neurons.:
