Page 13 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

THE GATES shrieked open again.

Iron rasped against iron, asound that went through bone as much as ear.

The crowd roared in reply, stamping their feet, their voices swelling into a chant that shook the air above the preserve.

Torches flared. Drones dipped low, lenses glittering like red insect eyes, hungry to drink in every drop offear.

Predators.

The word slid through Locus like a blade laid flat. Expected, prepared for, still unwelcome. The stench reached him first. Hot musk, copper, rot. And a sting of something that didn’t belong to Earth at all, asulfur note that burned the back of the throat.

Hannah stiffened at his side. She had her chin lifted, defiance like a crown on her small, trembling body. Pride couldn’t hide her pulse. Each beat echoed in the fine bones of her wrist where his hand closed to steady, not to claim. Her breath came sharp, then sharper, but didn’t break.

The headman’s voice boomed through the drones, too pleased with its own echo. “Trial Two. Beasts of fang and claw. The drones are showing you what the fighters cannot yet see. Place your bets, boys, and watch the alien bleed even more.”

The roar swelled. Men laughed. Coins clinked. Atablet bleated odds. Drones drifted in with a wasp hum for the close shot of a woman about to die and the creature who refused to let it happen.

A low chitter rolled out of thedark.

Yellow-green eyes winked into being, not one pair but many. The bodies that followed were rangy and wired with tendon under slick hides the color of wet stone. Spines ridged their backs. Each muzzle held a hinge of secondary teeth that clicked as they breathed.

Skarrin.

Pack hunters from the arid moons of Khor.

Fast, tireless, clever. They harried a target to exhaustion, then closed with a hundred small cuts.

Locus had seen Skarrin bury an armored scout in minutes when panic broke a line.

He had also seen them turn and devour an injured alpha of their pack for the heat of its blood.

Good. He could usethat.

A distant clank answered the pack. The ground gave a small shrug beneath Locus’s bare feet. Chains dragged. Heavy breath steamed.

A Dravox stepped into the light.

It was massive, humped at the shoulders, bone plates pushing through scarred hide like broken knuckles.

Aridge of keratin spines rose along its back.

One small eye was milk white, the other a feral ember.

Its foreclaws were sickle long, capped in matte black like volcanic glass.

Rings of old iron hung from its forelegs, each ring scored by teeth from whatever had been fed to it to keep itmean.

The crowd adored the Dravox. Their joy tasted like spoiledmeat.

Hannah’s nails bit into his forearm. Atremor raced through her skin. He didn’t look at her. He looked at the field, the angles of fence and shadow, the crease of the ground where something had scorched it earlier, the thin film that glistened there like tar. Vexx . He knew what that meant.

The air changed once more. Sure enough, acry split the night so fine it carved at the nerves. Drones jerked. Men cursed and clapped hands toears.

Bonewing.

It came from above, vast and pallid. Skin like thin marble, veined in black, stretched between finger bones as long as spears.

The head had no eyes, only a blunt wedge that flared when it shrieked.

Hooked wing-edges gleamed like sickles. The sound mapped everything, then turned the map into a weapon.

Hannah staggered into him, her palms flying to her ears. Her cheek struck his chest. Heat hit him, shocking and bright. He caged her with one arm, awall against herback.

“Stand,” he said, voice flat. “Breathe.”

“I can’t.”

“You can. Breathe.”

She fought for it and won. His mouth almost curved. Not pride. Recognition. Awoman who refused to break was a weapon in the right hands.

The last scent arrived with a hiss that burned the air itself.

Ashmaw.

It slunk from the shadows, an insectile horror on six crooked limbs, mottled exterior, joints oozing a viscous sheen that smoked where it touched dirt.

Its jaws unhinged sideways, then sideways again, opening to show a wet black cavity lined with rows of teeth too small and too many.

Aclot of resin gathered on its tongue. It hawked.

The clot struck the ground and burned with corrugated flame before collapsing into powdery ash that still smoked.

“Four kinds,” Hannah whispered, horror thin as glass. “They’re not even from here.”

“They are not,” Locus said. “Stay close.”

“Do you recognize them? Do you know how to defeat them?”

“I do.”

She pressed into his side for a heartbeat, then stepped back enough to move.

He noted the correction, the will in it.

Everything would be in the timing. He needed the pack of Skarrin frantic, the beastly Dravox enraged, the Bonewing cut, and the chitinous Ashmaw’s acid spent.

Then he needed to finish everything before the crowd forced a newrule.

One of the pack-hunting Skarrin moved first.

They never tested alone. Two flanked right. One slid forward as a lure. The rest fanned, jaws clicking in tight rhythm that tried to worm its way into prey cadence. Their feet made no sound. Their breath did. Hot, eager, almost laughing.

Hannah’s breath hitched. “They’re so fast.”

“Do not watch the one in front,” he said. “Watch the ones you cannot see.”

The Skarrin in front lunged, jaws snapping shut on empty air as the bait line collapsed.

Locus recognized the tactic instantly—the lure designed to draw his attention while the real attack came from the sides.

Instead of falling for it, he surged forward, stepping through the feint to meet it head-on.

His hand closed on its throat mid-leap. The Skarrin weighed less than it looked.

He wrenched, vertebrae giving in his palm. The body bucked once, then hunglimp.

He hurled it at the massive, humped Dravox.

The corpse struck the thick muzzle. Blood smeared hot across the Dravox’s lips. The beast roared at once, asound that rattled ribs. It threw back its head, tasted what had marked it, then raked its claws at the nearest living Skarrin as if the insult had come from thepack.

Men screamed delight. Coins changed hands so fast they sounded likerain.

The pack’s rhythm broke. Good. Locus stepped into the new beat.

Two came for his knees, clean teamwork meant to open tendons.

He didn’t give them tendons. He gave them the flat of his shin as a hammer.

One Skarrin’s jaw cracked. The other skidded sideways on a smear of ash left by the Ashmaw spit.

It yelped, thin and high, as resin clung, then sizzled fur andskin.

The Dravox swung toward the movement. Its claws took two Skarrin apart as if they were rope and then began to devour them.

The air filled with the metallic reek of blood.

Hannah jerked against him, not away, areflex to put her body to his.

He felt the shock of her, the tremble she tried to conceal.

He wanted to put his mouth to her temple and order her to live.

He didn’t. He set his body, measured angles, and set the nextturn.

The Bonewing shrieked and folded to dive.

The sound ripped at Hannah again. She gasped, dropped to her knees, hands to her ears.

He went down with her at once, covering her with his body as the Bonewing’s hooked wing ripped a trench where her ribs had just been.

Warm dirt spattered her bare legs. Her breath hit his throat in hot bursts.

The line of her thigh slid along his hip as he shieldedher.

“Locus,” she breathed, not a plea, awarning.

“I hear it.” He rolled, dragging her with him, and the second wing scythed the ground instead of her spine. The Bonewing skimmed close enough for him to smell the sweet rot of its skin. It wheeled up, hunting for a new vector.

The Ashmaw, anightmarish crawler, spat again. The resin slapped in front of Hannah’s foot and burst in corrugated flame. Heat flared. She flinched, then bit back sound. He saw the scorch nick the edge of her halter where it had already torn. Anger tightened through him until bone creaked.

“Move with me,” he said. “Left, then cut back. Do not look up when it screams.”

“I will trip if I don’t look.”

“You will not. Iwill catch you.”

She flashed him a look that tried hard to be determination and couldn’t quite hide fear. “That isn’t reassuring.”

“It is not meant to be.”

The Bonewing shrieked. They moved, their bodies aligning without thought. The heat of her back sank into his chest as the air jolted from a dive that missed. The Dravox roared as the Bonewing’s hook took flesh from its shoulder. The beast reared. Claws rakedsky.

“Now,” he said. He seized Hannah around the waist, lifted, and turned.

The Bonewing came around for a second pass, too close to the hulking Dravox.

The Dravox’s forelimb lashed. Hook met claw and skin split, membrane tearing like cloth.

The Bonewing screamed for real then, not the mapping cry but pain pitched high enough to crack.

It lost height and clipped the ground, throwing grit across Hannah’s shins.

She caught her balance with a sound that tried to be a curse and broke into a breath. He set her down, fingers lingering at her waist, heat tearing through the control he prized. Her skin was flushed and slick with sweat. She smelled of terror, fury, and something bright that lived underboth.

“Stay behind me,” hesaid.

“You already said that.”

“Then obey it twice.”

She made a rough sound that might have been a laugh if her knees weren’t shaking. “You’re insufferable.”

“Alive,” he said. “That is the useful part.”

The Skarrin rallied. Ahalf dozen remained. The dead ones bled in arcs that silvered the ground. The surviving pack members shifted to a crescent that would pincer him against the Dravox if he allowed it. He didnot.