Chapter 23
Peyton
Tahk roared and spun, grabbing his sword and impaling the lion-man beside him. The other ducked his next blow and roared back. I had thought Tahk was going to die. He had been about to surrender. I saw it in his eyes, but then a determination filled them. I gasped as claws pierced the skin of my neck and trembled as the lion-man holding me roared above me.
Tahk snarled and charged towards me, but the other lion-man flew at him, and they tumbled to the ground. I gasped as the claws were ripped from my body and I dropped to the ground, my knees smacking against the stone.
I cried out as a warm liquid splashed against my back. I rolled and had to roll again to avoid being crushed by what was left of the lion-man that had held me falling in pieces to the floor.
I gaped at the sight above me, my chest heaving in relief, but also snagging in a rush of new terror. The Juldo were here. I flopped to my belly and crawled towards the bed. I heard Tahk snarling and the gurgling of his attacker as he died. I screwed my eyes shut tight as black boots thumped into my line of sight. I braced for the blow, but it didn’t come. Widening my eyes on the boots, I didn’t dare look up at the Juldo man standing above me. I had never seen anything like him. He was terrifying and there was something ver disturbing about his emotionless gaze.
The boots stopped an inch from my face. An eerie calm surrounded the room, and I squinted my eyes shut. I could barely hear Tahk’s furious huffs over my own gasping breaths.
Nobody moved. I peeked and could see Tahk’s crouched position out of the corner of my eye. He had a severed head in one hand, and a bloody sword in the other as he crouched in a puddle of blood. The Juldo still stood an inch from my face. My hands lay flat against the stone floor on either side of my head. I hated how helpless I felt in that moment.
“You,” Tahk snarled. I had never heard him sound so menacing.
A raspy chuckle answered him from above me.
“Leave her,” Tahk snarled again, his muscles bunching tight. He didn’t look away from the Juldo, and I didn’t take my eyes off him. “I said LEAVE HER!”
Another raspy chuckle. The voice that answered him was so harsh and broken it rattled my bones. It was otherworldly. One voice, echoing thousands. “How will you stop me?” The voices boomed throughout the room.
“LEAVE HER!” Tahk stood and roared, shaking the floor as the lion-man had. I winced and stilled my hands. Something instinctive told me not to make any sudden movements. This was not an ordinary Juldo. Something was very, very wrong with this one.
“I am not here for the female.”
I sagged into the floor as the black boots stepped back and away from me. Tahk stepped slowly, circling me from behind. The boots backed away to the far side of the room, only then did Tahk grab for me. He pulled me up and against his chest. His hands too tight, his breathing too heavy. I grabbed him just as tight.
A sagged in his arms, but I knew we weren’t safe yet. Tahk was too stiff. His sword arm crossed in front of me, forming a barrier. It was then I dared to look up.
The Juldo had backed into the far wall by the bathing room. He leaned against the wall casually, his booted feet crossed in front of him, his arms crossed against his barrel chest just as casually. His eyes were a complete obsidian orb. Not a speck of color.
Not Juldo eyes.
Something else.
He wore leather pants and a black cotton-type long sleeve shirt. Leather holsters wrapped around his shoulders. Steel gleamed from the holsters. Two black handles crossed behind his head. Swords. He had not a single weapon in his red hands. Nano-tech spread up his arms, and his neck, but he had by far the most visible red flesh I had seen on any of the Juldo that had attacked before. Long black hair fell in his face, human-like hair. It parted when he tilted his head, revealing a face that was carved and scarred, his features nearly unrecognizable. A thick slash bulged clear across his neck. How had he not lost his head from an injury like that?
The Juldo grinned a cruel smile, running his thumb along the scar softly.
I gulped and looked away. I had thought I had known fear. I had thought there was not a thing scarier than being underneath a lion-man moments ago. But how wrong I was. Violent survival instincts were telling me there was not one thing, not one thing, more dangerous than the Juldo in the room now. I trembled against Tahk, peeking out the balcony opening. Where were Borv and Syn?
“They are preoccupied at the moment.”
I shuddered violently at the layered voice. It echoed around me. Whispering and shouting at once.
“How many?” Tahk snarled.
The Juldo chuckled again. “A dozen or so.”
A dozen? Tahk barely fought off three of them. I glanced back at the opening worriedly, were they okay?
“They live.”
I shuddered again. How did he keep guessing my thoughts? Was this Mantu all over again. I wrapped my arms around myself.
“Who sent you?” Tahk wrapped his free hand around my waist, and slowly pulled me behind him. I gulped and shook. I trusted my guy, he was the toughest and all that, but this other guy? He scared the absolute shit out of me. I did not want Tahk fighting him.
The Juldo didn’t answer Tahk. Instead he studied him, something working behind his black eyes. The rooms glow gleamed off the black orbs as they rolled up and down Tahk’s threatening stance.
“I am not here for you either.”
“Who then?” Tahk took a step forward.
The Juldo looked down at the dead lion-men, he smiled again, slow, sadistically. “Not you.”
“You killed my King, Shadow Born. I cannot let you leave here.” Tahk pulled a dagger free, bending his thick thighs. Shadow born?
“I did.”
Tahk snarled but didn’t attack. “Why?”
“Why not?”
Tahk roared. And still, the Juldo remained completely at ease. Not an ounce of concern facing nearly three-hundred pounds of a furious Dahk Commander.
“Who hired you?”
This was the assassin? The assassin that killed King Aryx?
The Juldo chuckled again, his creepy thousand-toned chuckle. “Who hired them?”
Tahk scrunched his brow but didn’t look at the dead aliens.
“Your kingdom is falling apart from the inside, Commander.”
Tahk shook his head. “The Council then?”
“Where is your Queen, Commander of Dahk?”
Tahk stiffened. “You took her?”
The Juldo shook his head. Slowly. Back and forth. Eerily human-like.
“Who?”
“Not my kin.” The Juldo gritted his teeth as the voices blared out of his throat, growing in volume. I winced and covered my ears. Even Tahk’s eye twitched from the horrible sound.
“You lie.” Tahk took another step forward, his brows scrunching with indecision.
“WE DO NOT.” The Juldo growled and bared his fangs. Grasping his throat. His voice shook the room, its power shaking the chipped stone from the fight.
“THE QUEEN THAT BETRAYS. QUEEN OF LIES. QUEEN OF DECEPTION. QUEEN OF ORDER.”
I clawed at my ears, willing the voices to leave my head. They pummeled me from all sides. Tahk stepped back, alarm crowding his face. He glanced between me and the Juldo growing agitated and restless.
“THE LORD SENT US. COMMANDER OF DAHK. COMMANDER OF CORRUPTION.”
“The Kilbus Lord?” Tahk choked and staggered.
The Juldo and his hideous voices chuckled sadistically. “LORD OF MANY. LORD OF HUMANS. LORD OF VICTORIES.”
The Juldo roared and clawed at his throat. “PROTECT THE KING. KING OF REDEMPTION. KING OF FALLEN KINGDOMS. KING OF RECLAMATION.”
“Uthyf?” Tahk’s eyes roamed the Juldo wildly. “Who are you? Why have you come?”
The voices cackled. The Juldo’s eyes were crazed, bleeding solid white. I backed away, bumping into the bed behind me.
“Why? Who comes for him?”
“ALL COME FOR HIM.”
“WHO!?” Tahk roared, “WHO COMES FOR THE KING!?”
“WE WILL. WE WILL COME FOR YOUR KING.” The voiced cackled, again and again, slowly bleeding away. The Juldo gasped, his eyes bleeding back to solid black. He gasped, slowly releasing his throat.
“Shadow born?” Tahk backed away, blocking me.
The Juldo chuckled grimly. The voices muffled to a lower pitch, still eerie, but somehow less so. “Protect your King, Commander. They are never wrong.”
I gasped when the Juldo spun in a circle, vanishing into shadow. The dark spread out encompassing the room. Not leaving a single trace of him behind.