I tightened my grip.
“That’s not Ty. Tell her, Delight.”
While I waited for Delight to do exactly that, I scanned the situation I’d just run us both into—and it was a situation. My stomach rolled, and my eyes skittered over the half of the hangar that lived up to Alice’s term ‘slaughterhouse’. I didn’t want to know what those humans were doing to the other forms suspended in frames before them.
The humans looked towards us, and their victims hung limply in their chains, the floor below spattered with blood and gore and… other things. I forced my gaze past the torture going on below, and saw a row of small pre-fab offices along the far wall. Unfortunately, we’d have to pass the torturers and their victims… and the two guards at one end. And, once we reached them, we had no idea what we’d find.
“Well, fuck,” Alice said, as I scanned back the other way, and I guessed Delight had just ripped the memories of the cocoon room from my implant, and shown her those. Nothing like getting someone else to do your dirty work for you.
“Needs must,” Delight said. “You should be happy. She wasn’t going to believe me. She believed you, instead.”
She paused, and I felt her taking a look at what I was seeing, noting the luxury shuttle taking up the other half of what Alice had called the slaughterhouse. It was of human make, not arach—and it did not belong to the Lord Andreus Corovan.
“Looks like you’ve found their center of operations,” Delight said, in my head, which was exactly what I didn’t need to hear, from her.
“I could fly that,” I said, gesturing towards the shuttle.
“Yeah, but I don’t think they’re going to let you on without a ticket.”
Alice indicated the two arach warriors standing guard beside the landing struts. They were a problem—that and the shuttle was buttoned up tight and powered down, which meant there were no systems inside that I could hack. Systems usually had to be running before I could get into them.
There was no time to power up and then hack it. The shuttle was out. The arach were catching up, and the masked men and women were now looking over at us instead of their victims. They were showing a lot more interest than I’d like, and it didn’t look like a single one of them had sense enough to run.
“We need more guns,” I said, and turned to face the warriors that had pursued me out of the cocoon room.
“Yuh think?” Alice asked, reaching over and pulling the Brahms from its holster, and moving so her back was against mine.
“Hey!”
“Shut up. You’ve got the biggest gun here, so it’s only fair I get the two smaller ones.”
“Very funny,” but I’d already sighted on the lead arach, and squeezed the trigger.
“Just don’t take too long getting me another one.”
I adjusted my aim slightly, and sent a short burst into the first warrior out of the corridor. He jerked under the impact, but kept coming, and I realized these fuckers were wearing body armor, that the ripple of light over his outline meant he had one of the suits with a field.
“But those aren’t out, yet,” Delight whispered. “How the fuck…”
And she was gone, no doubt to alert Odyssey that their R&D folk had sprung a leak.
Alice didn’t turn to see what was going on. She had targets enough of her own.
“I’m going to be out of charge before I’m done, here,” she warned, and sent me a brief flash of what was coming towards us.
The humans had decided to join the fray, and the two arach near the shuttle had become four.
“What the fuckity fuck,” I said. “Why aren’t they running?”
It was a fair question. The second arach through the door hadn’t stayed in his semi-human form, but morphed through a billowing cloud of black to become the biggest goddamned spider I had ever seen.
“Holy fuck!” Delight said over the comms. “You’ve got yourself a king.”
“King of what?”
“It’s an arach male, stupid,” Alice chipped in “—a fertile one. This whole place was probably some sort of wedding gift. You’ve just fucked up a clan union.”
“I’ve what?”
“Well, you will have, if you manage to kill that fucker.”
I kept my sights on the arach in front, and watched the solids hit, and fall harmlessly to the ground.
“We need to move,” I said, and Alice glanced away from the approaching humans and arach guards.
“We sure as shit do.”
There was only one way to run. We took a diagonal across the front of the oncoming humans in their costumes of leather, chain and vinyl. With any luck, the arach had built up enough speed to make changing course difficult.
“A night with the king for any who can deliver them.”
That was definitely not what I wanted to hear being shouted out behind me, and I realized why the lead arach had remained in human form: Vocal cords.
What I couldn’t work out was why his cry engendered a cheer from the oncoming humans, and why they all suddenly broke into a run, brandishing the various instruments they’d been holding.
“They’re looking for the ultimate thrill,” Alice said, and I almost stopped in surprise.
That thing was a thrill?
“You haven’t seen him in human form,” Alice said. “He is utterly gorgeous to look at… and, when he gets close…”
She sighed, and I suddenly didn’t want to know how she knew.
“Ty saved me,” she said.
We’d almost reached the nearest pre-fab, and the humans were closing.
“In there!” I said, and raced up the steps leading into the hut.
I flung open the door, took two paces in, and skidded to a very abrupt and horrified halt. Alice ran into the back of me, and then saw why I’d stopped.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed. “You are worse than Delight!”
Which was totally uncalled for, but something I’d have to deal with later, because there was no way in the all the stars that I was going to stay
