What a mess! Chain thought as he looked at the ripped and broken furniture…the shattered picture frames…the scattered books… It seemed the Varians were endlessly destructive in their quest for the T’lix-Kruthe—they were tearing up everything.
Not everything, I hope, he thought. He prayed to the Goddess that Vicky herself would be intact when he found her.
They made their slow, careful way through the house but it seemed that most of the invaders had either been outside or were upstairs. Chain wanted to go up to where the action was, but he needed to be certain Victoria wasn’t down here somewhere first. It was impossible to track her by smell because she had been everywhere in this house—so her scent was all over, making it difficult to tell where she might be at this exact moment.
Liosh incinerated two Varians in the food prep area—what the humans called a kitchen—who seemed intent on breaking every dish and bowl in the cupboards. There was white dust coating everything too, which seemed to be coming from a small paper sack with the word, “flour” printed on it. It looked like one of the lizard aliens had stomped on it and sent it flying everywhere because there was a boot print right in the middle.
When the two invaders were nothing but grease spots on the floor, Chain looked around the wreckage, his boots crunching on the broken shards of crockery. Victoria wasn’t here—wasn’t anywhere on the first floor. So she must be upstairs, where he could still hear more of the Varians—unaware that their comrades were dead—trashing the place.
Liosh and Vorn seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“They must be upst—” the Blood Kindred started to say. But his words were interrupted by a crash and a scream that came from outside the house.
Chapter Forty-one
Vicky heard the crash from outside the window and then a scream of pain that sounded like Melli. She struggled harder against the alien holding her.
“Let me go! It’s not here—I swear it’s not! The T’lix-Kruthe was taken to the Kindred Mother Ship. Now let me go—let me get to my daughter!” she begged.
“Ssso the thief took it to the Kindred ssship, did he?” the Varian hissed.
It was hard to read his expressions since his face was a cross between an alligator and an iguana but Vicky had the bad feeling he was looking at her with something like skepticism.
“Yes, I swear!” she exclaimed. “Please, just let me go—there’s nothing for you here!”
She struggled to get closer to the still-open window but her Varian captor wouldn’t allow it. He dragged her out of the spare room and into the hallway where she could see two or three others of his kind tearing her bedroom to pieces.
“Where did you hide it?” he demanded, poking the snub-nosed end of his weapon into her ribs. “Where? Tell usss!”
“Look! Sssloar has a captive!” One of the other Varians announced, catching sight of them from inside her bedroom.
His announcement caused a quick exodus from the bedroom and Vicky saw that there were five of the scaly green lizard men coming towards her. Not to mention the one which was still holding her wrists in his repulsive, seven-fingered alien appendage.
As they came towards her, she wanted to scream but the sound seemed to stick in her throat. They would kill her now—she was sure of it. Kill her and she would never know if Melli was okay and if she and Jodi had gotten away. She would never see he daughters again.
The thought made her want to fight—she had to get to her girls! She was just about to hike a knee into her captor’s crotch and hope that the Varians kept their balls in the same place humans did, when one of the other invading aliens suddenly dropped to the ground, half incinerated.
It was the bottom half, as it happened. One moment he was standing there and the next, there was only a blackened stump at his waist and his legs were gone. The top half of him thumped to the carpet, letting out a hissing scream of pain and disbelief before his eyes rolled up in his head and he died.
The other four Varians looked down at their fallen comrade and then stared wildly around, as though trying to figure out where the shot had come from. They looked up and down the hallway and into to the stairwell, but there was no one there.
No one they can see, anyway, Vicky thought and a wild hope bloomed in her heart. Another shot came from a different direction. This time the Varian it was aimed at was cut in two lengthwise, carved from the flat, scaly top of his head all the way down to his crotch. His right and left halves fell in two different directions like a tree split by lightning and the Varians hissed angrily and redoubled their search.
“What’sss happening? Where isss it?” they asked each other, their forked tongues flickering as they waved their blasters wildly from side to side.
Suddenly one of the remaining Varians seemed to trip over something in mid-air. There was a grunting sound and then a human head was suddenly floating there.
No, not human—Kindred! Vicky thought. It was Chain—he must have been wearing his scatterlight cloak when he killed the first two Varians but now he was revealed.
And there were still three left—four if you counted the one holding her—and Chain had lost the element of surprise. The Varians hissed and one of them shrieked,
“The thief! It’s the thief!”
They rushed towards him but Chain was ready. He ducked and dodged as they shot wildly at him. Then, using his blaster almost like
