After what felt like hours of the huge, awful insects sawing, hammering, and tearing at her cloak of thorns, Harper found the sudden silence ominous. Surely the Hive king—what had Shad told her he was named? Something with lots of Zs in it. Anyway, surely he hadn’t given up so easily. He’d been really determined to have her and had told her so in no uncertain terms.
When she’d first appeared in the weird, underground chamber lit by the dim, red glow of pulsing insect abdomens protruding from the walls around her, Harper had been petrified with fright. It had all seemed so alien, so awful and the stench in the air was beyond anything she’d ever smelled—thick and sweet and meaty like rotting flesh dipped in honey. It made her stomach roll and all her limbs seemed frozen with terror.
Thank goodness her cloak of thorns hadn’t been frozen as well. The minute the huge, hairy insects reached for her with their long, chitinous claws, it had hissed and fought back. Then he had arrived. The king—no, the Sovereign. Sovereign X'izith—that was his name. He had come.
He’d stalked up to her, looking to Harper like a seven foot tall cockroach with an ant’s head. Below, a wasp’s stinger that appeared to be as long as her arm extended from his lower abdomen.
Bugs, how she hated bugs! And the bigger they were, the more Harper hated them. She shrank back from the huge, disgusting Sovereign, her skin crawling in horror and disgust.
But her instinctive reaction didn’t seem to bother X’izith at all.
“So,” he had hissed at her. “My ten’sora—you are here at last. You shall be my Breeding Queen and bear an army of workers. But first…” He had leaned over her, his long joints moving in a jerky, insectile way. “First I think I will implant the royal grubs. I have waited long enough for a female with a fertile womb—it is time.”
Harper had been frozen with fear but then he extended his barb. Long and thick and horribly sharp, it dripped with thick green ichor which looked like poison and hissed like acid when it dribbled on the red stone floor.
“No!” she had gasped. She wanted to run but she was on a table-like platform and there was nowhere to go—she was completely surrounded by huge, awful insects, clacking their mandibles, twitching their antennae and rustling their wings.
It was like something out of a nightmare or maybe a bad drug trip—not that Harper had ever done much more than smoke a little pot in college. But she’d had a friend who was into much heavier stuff—mind altering drugs—and the scenario Harper faced now reminded her of some of the “bad trips” he had told her about.
When the Hive Sovereign had reached for her, she couldn’t think what to do. But she felt her cloak wrapping even more tightly around her and heard it hiss an angry warning at the insectile beings surrounding her.
Then she seemed to hear a voice echo in her head—a memory from the recent past. The voice of the cloth merchant from the Thieves' Market.
“When your lovely lady wears the cloak, nothing can harm her. It will be as strong as plasti-steel armor, repelling a knife or sword—even the blast of a plasma rifle cannot penetrate it.”
The cloak! The cloak can protect me, Harper realized.
Instinctively, she’d curled into a ball, face down on the table-like platform and huddled there, like a little kid hiding under the blanket so the boogie-man couldn’t get her.
As defensive strategies went, it wasn’t much, but so far it had been extremely effective. Harper felt bad for her cloak of thorns which was taking huge amounts of abuse but, true to the merchant’s word, it protected her faithfully, sticking to her like glue and absorbing any and all blows so that she hardly felt them.
Harper knew she couldn’t stay here like this forever. She was beginning to get muscle cramps from squeezing herself into a ball for so long, but in lieu of a better idea, she was pretty much stuck.
If I can just hold out, she told herself. Shad saw me get taken. Maybe he can come to me somehow. If I can just make it until someone comes…
That was when she smelled the strange, bitter, burning smell—like plastic melting—and something odd began to happen to the table beneath her.
* * * * *
They caught the Hive completely unprepared at first—maybe because X’izith was too focused on getting to Harper to pay attention to what was going on outside his lair, Shad thought grimly. There were guards at the entrance to the underground area but the Kindred overwhelmed them with sheer numbers and cut them down one by one.
“Do it quick—don’t let them sound the alarm,” the male beside Shad growled. “Aim for the joints and the sections where the head meets the body and the thorax meets the abdomen—those are the vulnerable parts.”
He was the specialist in the Hive Baird had talked about—a warrior named Varin with pale copper eyes and an intense look about him. He seemed to know a lot about the Hive’s defenses and he was an absolutely deadly shot, at least according to Baird.
“Sound the alarm? I haven’t heard anything from the ones we’ve killed,” Baird said but Varin shook his head.
“With the Hive it’s all about smell. If one of them gets off an alarm scent, they’ll swarm. That’s what you’ve got to watch out for.”
"Varin is right—the Hive runs on scent," Shad told his uncle.
“All right but what do you mean by they'll swarm?” Baird asked. "I don't—"
But even as he spoke, an acrid scent filled the air, wafting to the back tunnels and Varin growled, “Shit.”
Suddenly, echoing down the long corridors which appeared to have been melted into the solid rock, there was a sound. A thrumming, humming sound so low that at first Shad couldn’t identify it. Then it grew more distinct.
It’s like thousands of wings rustling at once, he thought. Thousands of claws scratching against the stones. Thousands of mandibles clicking in unison.
Then they came.
“Flame-torches out!” Baird bellowed and every warrior, Shad included, unholstered the handheld weapons which looked like large, silver blasters. But instead of a laser, the flame-torches shot rounds of pure fire—pellets which burst and sprayed liquid flames that clung to an enemy like glue, burning and burning until there was nothing left to burn.
It was dark in the tunnels under the Martian mountains but the flame pellets lit the dim gloom in nightmare flashes. Huge compound eyes glared at them from out of the darkness and there were too many limbs, too many curved, serrated mandibles clicking, hungry for their flesh.
“Burn them!” Baird bellowed. “Burn them all! Don’t leave a single one alive!”
Shad fired into the crowd with the rest of them, praying that Harper was somewhere safe—somewhere else. He knew she was alive—now that he was in range of her, he could feel the partial bond they had formed thrumming in his chest like a plucked string. So at least she was still alive but her fear…
Though he couldn’t catch any of her thoughts, Shad could feel Harper’s terror. It filled him so strongly it nearly drove him crazy with the need to get to her, to save her from whatever or whoever was hurting her.
Have to find her! Have to save her! Hang on, Kallana—I’m coming!
He roared his rage, firing into the swarming mass of giant insects with one hand while he slashed with the long laser blade Baird had given him to use with his other. These bastards were standing in his way—standing between him and Harper. He would kill them, Goddess-damn it! Kill every last one of the bug-eyed, spindly-limbed, insectile bastards. And if anything had happened to her…if that bastard X’izith had pierced her with his barb…
But that didn’t bear thinking of. Shad fired and hacked and slashed… fired and hacked and slashed…over and over, working desperately to get to the woman he loved.
Please Goddess, he prayed silently. Let me reach her in time…let it not be too late.
* * * * *
The acrid smell of burning got stronger and suddenly it was no longer so dark under the cloak. Harper couldn’t understand why but then she saw that the light was coming not from above, but from below her—almost right where her face was pressed to the rough tabletop.
Looking down, she saw that a small hole had opened in the thick stone and it was rapidly getting bigger.
Holy crap—are they burning through solid stone? How in the hell are they doing that?
Instinctively, she tried to move away, to shift positions without leaving the protective shelter of the cloak. But the hole was growing too quickly. As she started to move, something long and thin and horribly strong slipped up through the hole in the table and whipped around the back of her neck, holding her in place.
“Hey!” Harper gasped breathlessly. “Hey, let me go you son-of-a-bitch!”
But struggle as she might, she couldn’t get free. And since the strong coil holding her head down was inside the sheltering fabric, the cloak couldn’t protect her.
As Harper watched in horror, the hole grew even larger and she saw a face staring back at her—the same face she’d seen the first time she touched the harmless looking lifeguard who turned out to be a Hive mind-slave down at the beach.
Compound eyes and clicking mandibles—the face was alien, insectile. Hungry.
Harper started to scream and something shot out of the thing’s mouth and slid between her lips.
She gagged and fought but the slimy tube wormed its way down her throat and started pulsing. Her mouth was flooded with a flavor like rotting meat coated in honey.
“Now then,” she heard X’izith buzzing somewhere over her head. “Let’s see how you feel after a dose of the Blood Honey, my Queen. Soon you shall be ready to breed. Soon—”
“My Sovereign, please,” a new voice wined. “There is trouble in the corridors. The alarm scent has gone out. We fear the worst.”
“Close the entrance to the breeding chamber.” X'izith’s buzzing voice was sharp and commanding. “Close it now. Don’t let them—”
“Let her go, you fucker! What are you doing to her?” It was a roar of pure rage that made Harper’s ears ring despite the muffling cloak still over her head. To her relief, the voice sounded familiar.
Suddenly the alien beneath her let out a piercing, mewling shriek and the slimy tubes holding and invading her were hastily withdrawn.
At once, Harper started gagging, trying to get rid of the horrible taste and the awful liquid—whatever it was—that had been pumped down her throat and into her belly.
Have to throw it up, she thought wildly. It’s some kind of poison—as bad as the sex-milk—maybe worse.
She didn’t know how she knew this but somehow she was completely certain. She’d been forced to ingest something that would harm her—perhaps kill her—if she didn’t get rid of it.
But though she coughed and gagged, she couldn’t bring any of the meaty honey-like substance up. It seemed to refuse all attempts to dislodge it.
Oh God, what was she going to do?
“Shad?” she called in a trembling voice, because she was certain that was who the voice she’d heard belonged to. She could feel his protective rage through the partial bond they shared. It flooded her, letting her know he was here to keep her safe and kill anyone or anything that threatened her.
That’s right—Shad’s here. Everything is going to be all right now, a little voice whispered hopefully in the back of her head. He’s going to kill X’izith. In fact, he probably already has.
It must be true—she hadn’t heard the Hive Sovereign’s voice replying to Shad’s threat. Everything was okay now—it was safe to come out.
“Shad?” she asked again in a choking voice, sitting up and lifting her head at last.
“No! Stay down, Harper!” His white eyes were wild with fear. “Don’t—”
Alert to the danger, Harper started to duck her head and hide under the cloak again. But it was too late—a long, strangely jointed limb covered in wiry black hairs had snaked its way around her throat, just above the protective edge of the cloak.
“Put down your weapons,” she heard X’izith’s hissing voice demand in her ear. “Put them down and step back or I rip the female’s pretty little head off.”