Page 70 of His Claim
My throat tightened. The map said the Resistance sometimes used these lower passes to ferry supplies.
I crouched and touched a single print, then stood and looked up the path into the pines. I could have cried from the simple relief of a sign that wasn’t trying to kill me.
I was closing in on the Resistance.
CHAPTER 16
Varek
The roar crawled through the rock like it was, on its own, a living thing. It came up from the bend, a low rumble at first, then deeper, a sound that made the very seams of the earth shiver. Dust trickled from the ceiling in a thin gray thread. The lantern flame quivered and then steadied, casting a shadow deep into the tunnel that left me feeling uneasy.
The tunnel carried the smell of whatever was coming before I could make out any semblance of its shape. It stank of blood, rot, and some sort of chemical that burned my sinuses. Sweat dripped down and went cold on the back of my neck. I stepped forward and held my breath.
It came into view, and the light drew the nightmare out of the dark.
I had seen Nyktos, terrible creatures warped from the rage serum and mindless hunger. This was not that. This was larger, heavier, the size of a grizzly bear packed into the outline of a man. Shoulders like boulders, neck gone thick and ridged,its body studded with raised cords that pulsed. The fur that sprouted along its arms came in patches, and between them the skin shone black with veins that crawled like roots under ice. Its jaws had widened, teeth too long for a wolf and set at angles that said nothing natural had built them. Saliva hung in gleaming ropes from its open maw. The lantern light licked them into silver threads.
Then I saw its eyes.
Not yellow. Not the cold glass of a Nyktos. They were, impossibly, a brilliant shade of blue, buried in bizarre bloody, swollen tissue. A scar cut through the right brow. Three lines, each clean and white.
A stab of brutal recognition pierced right through me.
“Gareth,” I said, and the name tasted like rust on my tongue.
The thing that filled the tunnel was not my soldier anymore, not the hand at my shoulder in a night ambush, not the quiet voice that had asked for one more chance in training and then delivered.
This was wrong.
“Can you hear me?” I asked, because I had to. “Can you hear anything at all?”
The creature opened its mouth and tried to form a sound. What came out was a wet gargle followed by a moan that built into a roar. The sound filled the tunnel. My chest felt hollowed out. The lantern light swung and threw shadows like claws across the rock.
It came for me.
There was no warning. One heartbeat it was crouched, shoulders hunched, breath coming in savage pulls. The next it exploded forward. I stepped in to meet it because there was no other choice. I was a soldier, and I knew that hesitation kills.
The first blow from one of its hands/paws took my shoulder, a heavy club that spun me into the wall and stripped skin from my back. I slammed the lantern into its face and glass burst, oil spraying, flame washing upward into a brief curtain of light that set the ragged fur smoking.
The thing bellowed and flinched. I ducked under its arms, gripping my knife tightly with my right hand and driving it at the place where his ribs should part. The knife skated. The serum had toughened the skin there into something like wet bark. The tip lodged and then deepened a fraction. Black blood welled around the blade and the smell of it was wrong, sweet and metallic. It hit the back of my throat, and I pushed harder, teeth bared, until the knife sank in an inch and the monster convulsed in pain.
It threw me. My back hit the timber brace and the beam splintered. Fresh dust choked the air. I rolled before it could crush me into the floor and came up in a crouch, claws out, knife gone. It slammed both fists on the ground where I had been and the tunnel floor jumped. Rock split in a spider web pattern and one crack ran toward the rock fall like a black line drawn in an old ledger.
We circled each other in the dark, broken only by the sputtering oil fire. It shook its head, smoke curling from singed fur, and turned its face fully to me. The eyes were still there. The scars white and clean in the swollen mess. Gareth’s mouth moved behind those teeth and for a second, I thought I saw my nameform on his lips. Then his rage flooded whatever control had surfaced. He snarled and charged at me again.
The second impact drove my shoulder into the wall. My bones sang with agony. I raked claws across the thick cords of his forearm, and skin tore in long strips, blood running hot down his elbow. He didn’t seem to feel it. He pinned me and tried to crush my chest with his weight. I braced one hand under his throat and shoved up. The other paw came up to rake my flank. I saw the move before he made it and let my body slip. His claws tore cloth and not flesh, and I breathed the briefest sigh of relief.
He roared into my face. Spittle spattered my cheek. I smelled the chemical rot of whatever he’d been given coming off his breath. I could only guess that the Council had injected him with something that they were testing and thrown him into the dark to come end me and from what I’d seen already, it was eating him from the inside out.
“Forgive me,” I pleaded to my old friend, and drove both claws into his eyes.
He reeled back. He flailed and caught me high on the head. The world turned into a pulse of bright white. I fell, rolled, came up with one knee under me as he thrashed, a mass of muscle and pain that filled the tunnel. He smashed his head into the wall and blood sprayed in a dark fan. It painted the rock in a line that looked like a child’s smile.
I’d hoped that was the end of it, but it wasn’t.
He came for me blind.
I scrambled. The knife had fallen near the broken lantern glass. My fingers found the hilt by sheer luck. As he lunged, I slid under him and carved a long, deep line along his belly. Fleshsloughed open. Heat spilled over my forearm like an animal trying to escape captivity. He staggered and turned, and I drove for his throat.
