Chapter 37
Nahash felt nothing but the lust for killing. He slaughtered his victims with thrill in his veins for their death. He tore into them, ripping their flesh away, soaking his scales in their blood. Their viscera clotted around his fingers. He enjoyed the sound of popping and snapping bones when he used his tail to squeeze his victims to death.
He’d been so overcome that he’d very nearly swallowed one of them whole before coming around and remembering himself. The Great Serpent coiled inside him, urging him on—telling him to kill more, and then feast.
The power of his psionics sparked through his spine, crackling on his fingertips and along his tail as he destroyed one outpost after another, leaving a trail of dead bodies and destroyed tech in his wake as he made his way to the capital city where Cass was being held.
In his periphery, he sensed someone following him, but that hunter never came close enough for Nahash to kill. It was a cautious hunter, one Nahash was determined not to underestimate, even as he tried to shake it. No matter what routes he took to lose his pursuit, it always seemed to find him. And he always felt it watching.
But the maddened side of him didn’t care. It would tear through everything to get to Cass, with the whispers of the giant serpent eroding the person he’d once been and replacing him with a creature bent on chaos and destruction.
That was his purpose. He was chaos. He was the darkness of the void. He was the end of all things. That was why he had the power to destroy what foolish civilizations created, believing themselves immune to the darkness because of their technology.
Nahash brought death that started the cycle anew. Once he found Cass—who would save this body of his from the deterioration caused by his unshakable affliction—he would turn his attention to the wider galaxy and begin the process the Iriduans had interrupted when they’d captured the Great Serpent and slayed her. He would destroy all life in the galaxy. It was his destiny.
The presence of the hunter would not stop him. It wouldn’t even slow him down. Soon, he would claim that mysterious life as well.
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Hunter followed his prey, but kept at a distance, his spear and primitive projectile weapons close at hand. Nahash had already proven difficult to kill—more so with each passing moment. Though he seemed to have lost his mind—focused on destruction to a degree even Hunter had not seen before—he wasn’t behaving irrationally when it came to his defense.
Nahash had shielded himself with a projectile repulsion field. Normally, such shields had limited effectiveness over time when up against tech-enhanced weaponry, and no effectiveness against energy weapons of any sort. What they were effective for, extremely so, was lower velocity projectiles like the ones shot from the primitive projectile weapons he and the Iriduans were trying to use against Nahash in the absence of other alternatives.
The deaths of every single soldier and guard at the military outposts Nahash had hit told Hunter the weapons he carried would be of limited or no use at all. Still, it felt good to have at least one ranged weapon at hand in case the opportunity presented itself.
The only way that would happen would be for Hunter to get close when Nahash used his psionic pulse to destroy the tech in range of his ability, because Nahash had to disrupt his own shield briefly to send out the pulse.
That was the chance to hit him, but Nahash wasn’t a fool. He also wore a combat chest plate and arm guards. Though it seemed he didn’t want to cover his head with a helmet, it was a small target at the distance Hunter and the Iriduans had to keep between them lest Nahash detect them and kill them from range—because tech-assisted energy weapon Nahash carried worked just fine.
His tail offered a larger target, but bullets weren’t going to kill him if they struck him there, and it seemed the ones that had hit him when he’d dropped his shield to send out a pulse barely slowed him down. They did anger him and allow him to draw a bead on the person who’d shot him, which meant the death of that person.
Nahash seemed to sense Hunter’s presence, and that made Hunter very concerned. He couldn’t use any communication devices so close to Nahash, or they would draw the full focus of the rogue test subject, and Hunter wasn’t prepared to face him yet. He needed to find Nahash’s vulnerability, and that wasn’t going to be anything on Nahash himself. There was only one thing that would truly bring down the beast, but Hunter didn’t have a bio tracker for her, and his employers weren’t interested in allowing any harm come to her.
They’d wanted to take Nahash alive at first too, but then changed their minds after they received reports of the level of destruction he was capable of. They’d unleashed something they had no control over, and it was keeping their best at bay, unable to even get within range of him. Even their air support dropped out of the sky before it could target him.
His pulses were also growing stronger. No longer were they only affecting tech, but were also now damaging the buildings and surroundings. Hunter’s employers believed Nahash couldn’t keep such attacks up forever, but he knew the snake man didn’t have to. He had a singular goal in mind, and if he hit the capital city, nothing would stop him. The military force waiting to meet him didn’t stand a chance.
The Iriduans were planning an overwhelming wave attack of melee fighters armed with primitive weapons tipped by poison. Though many would die rushing Nahash, they figured at least one would survive long enough to cut him with the poison designed to cause instant death.
Not poison, but venom. Hunter shook his head at their confidence in their plan. Not all victims suffered the same effects from venom, and Nahash had already shown himself to be resistant to some toxins. They were planning to sacrifice a lot of men to hold the city against him, betting on that one opportunity.
Personally, Hunter didn’t think Nahash would even travel directly into the city. He had to know that they would try and move his mate. He would be watching the spaceport for shuttles as well as the ground and air transit ports. With his rapidly expanding range, he might even be able to shut down all vehicular transportation in the city from beyond its shielded boundaries—and the light shield itself would also be useless against him.
Since he couldn’t communicate any of these concerns to the Iriduans without returning to them and taking his eyes off his target, he had to hope they’d figured that out as well. They wanted him to keep Nahash in his sight. He was the only one who could track the subject himself, rather than following the path of destruction Nahash left in his wake.
He believed he should be with the team planning Nahash’s takedown, letting them know what path he took by feeling it through his bio-tracker, but his employers wanted a visual on Nahash—and Hunter was the only one who could stay on his trail, no matter what twists and turns he took to shake his follower.
The number of bad calls the Iriduans had made were beginning to pile up, and Hunter was starting to doubt they would ever be able to provide the cure they’d promised him. It would be so easy for him to return to his own shuttle and jump planet while the Iriduans were distracted. He had hundreds of valuable secrets collected from his time in their service.
On the other hand, no one else in the galaxy was working on finding a cure for imprinting. If he burned his bridges with the Iriduans now, he’d never have that cure, and he’d never be truly free from the threat of encountering a queen looking to mate. Queens infested every single civilized planet. They could live in a dormant state for centuries waiting for a wanderer. If wanderers weren’t so rare, the Menops would already have overrun all settled worlds.
He didn’t want to lose the chance to free himself from the threat of a queen.
All he had to do was kill one male to complete his mission. He would not falter in his task. Nahash would die by his hand.