Page 64 of Alien Jeopardy

I need to make a bigger entrance. I need to outshine my Draegon.

“My time to shine, attention hog,” I scream at Rex.

He’s too busy trying to pull the alien snake off him to clock that bit of adrenaline-fueled weirdness.

A scaled tail slaps the water, the tip of it curling around his horn and jerking his head back under.

Thunder sounds, and I’ve already waited too long. I have a sneaking suspicion the longer Rex fights the thing, the worse the odds will be for my partner.

I tear open the packet labeled “bait,” and a foul stench immediately makes me gag.

Note to self: do not inhale freshly opened bait pouches.

It’s too late, though, and I throw up over the side of the boat.

More chum. Yum yum.

Still gagging, I dump the disgusting contents of the pouch into the water. The knife floats next to me, and I pick it up, biting my lip.

“Ah, fuck it,” I say, then slice the wound from the edge of the boat deeper, until blood runs thick into the water.

It hits me at the same time as the huge thing under the water slams into the boat—this probably wasn’t my best or brightest idea.

We’re not gonna survive this.

CHAPTER

THIRTY

Ka-Rexsh

The creature is a horrifying mix of razor-sharp teeth, stacked twenty rows deep, and thick, muscled coils. Fins fan out behind a set of jagged gills, too close to the monstrous mouth for me to attempt to strike it there.

I don’t have my talons on one hand—I broke them off to better please Ellison, and I can’t make myself regret that.

At least I will have died having brought her pleasure.

The creature tightens around my chest, and I cry out as one of the bones in my left wing snaps under the pressure. My mouth clamps shut, and I rake my talons over the beast’s hide, the little good that it does.

I have Ellison.

I have a reason to live.

I could have a future.

I want her in it.

The thoughts tangle, growing as murky as the water all around us.

It’s so silent in the water, so quiet.

I surface again, gasping for air, air that’s hard to come by with the creature squeezing the life from me.

A flash of light.

Ellison hangs over the boat, holding her palm out, a stream of crimson coloring the water below.

The serpent’s coils loosen.