Page 93 of Alien Jeopardy

“Like riding a bike,” I murmur, then play tug-of-war with the mud for the bow and quiver until they finally jerk free.

Momentum sends me directly onto my ass into the slop, and I swear, sweat is rolling between my boobs.

I’m intensely aware of the fact I smell like an onion, but as that clicking sounds again, so loud I wince, I decide caring at all about the way I smell and look is stupid. I need to get somewhere safe, and I need to find Rex as soon as possible. I don’t want to think about what Ken considers a challenge as more thirty-minute increments stack up.

By the time I get out of the mud, I’m pretty much coated in it.

“Maybe I have to fight a giant man-eating worm that hunts on scent alone,” I say, then laugh, because that’s the plot of one of the most popular books on Earth.

I cringe. Damn.

I really hope I don’t have to fight a giant worm. “No thank you on the worms, Ken, I’ll pass.”

The quiver goes over my shoulder, the strap nestling between my breasts, and I hang the bow over a shoulder, too. I pull one of the arrows out, then tilt my head as I inspect it.

“Camp Ozarka never had any arrows like this.” It’s alien, that’s for sure. Instead of a pointed tip, or a suction cup, like what the littlest campers used, it’s got a heavy round end.

I have no idea how this thing is going to fly, and my original enthusiasm at being gifted a weapon I actually know how to use goes out the window.

It’s been well over a decade since I last used a bow and arrow, so the odds were already not great, but an arrow like this, with a cylinder on the end? I have no idea what to do with it.

Shrugging, I keep moving through the marsh, trying to avoid going in a circle.

Again.

Problem is, every step I take seems to take me closer to the loud crunching and clicking. Dread pools in my stomach, and I wish, for the hundredth time, that Ka-Rexsh was with me.

I hope he’s safe. I hope he’s having a better time than I am, because if anyone can survive this type of thing, it’s him. I’ve been lucky to have him in my corner this whole time, and when I get to see him again, I’m going to give him a million high fives.

And maybe a blow job.

Who could say?

I’m so involved in my little Ka-Rexsh reunion fantasy that I don’t realize the stalks in front of me aren’t cattails until I’m right up on them.

They’re not waving in the non-existent breeze, like my brain tried to tell me, but I was so wrapped up in imagining my alien mate’s hot bod that I didn’t notice there wasn’t a breeze at all.

Fuck. Me.

The ground shifts, mud oozing towards the stalks, which are waving frantically, and each at least the size of my arm.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” I moan, the mud sucking me towards the dancing stalks.

Not stalks, antennae.

“Oh, you wanted a fucking worm?” I yell at myself, slapping a bug on my bicep, then pulling the bow out.

One of the arrows follows, and I frown in chagrin at the weird-ass weapon.

Then I try to back the fuck up because whatever this thing is, it’s huge.

“Not a fucking worm,” I yell, the mud sucking at me, the animal in front of me drawing me deeper as it rises out of the muck.

The heinously loud clicking sounds again, and I look left as I scramble backwards.

It’s so enormously large that my brain doesn’t comprehend what it is at first. Red-brown chitinous pebbled exoskeleton rises higher, two elements clacking together.

A pincer.