Serpent of the Abyss by S.J. Sanders
Chapter 38
Slengral dropped down into the sands, his chest heaving with anger as he glared at the colony. Buried beneath all that was the knowledge that he had failed to save his mate, and now Kehtal too.
He had been shocked when he saw Kehtal winging his way over to him. He had not expected to see either of the males he left behind in his nest. Kehtal should not have been there. Slengral had tried warning him, and then when that failed, he had tempted to knock the male out of the sky in order to save him. After several attempts of attacking the colony, he had watched off and on as he dozed beneath the sand as the humans erected the enormous structure beside their dome.
He had known instinctively that with its size it was meant to pose a danger to any attacks from the air, but he had not immediately realized how they would retaliate. Not until after he attacked the dome once more after the suns set in attempt to scare them into freeing his mate. He had learned that his claws were useless against the shell protecting the colony and so he made his attacks louder and as frightening as possible.
That was when he discovered the purpose of the structure—and had come face to face with the net. Several times in the first part of the night, he had just barely managed to avoid it. Kehtal would have had no trouble if he had been aware of it.
Remorse hit Slengral hard. He could not leave them in there, but he did not know what to do.
Dropping back down into the sand, he flattened himself and settled in to watch once more, to see if he could see any weakness that would present an opportunity to him. Even if there were one during the day, he would take advantage of it even if it meant risking his scales to the full exposure of the sun. He would do anything to free them.
He owed Kehtal. And he would do anything and everything for Lori.
* * *
Asound outside of her cell roused Lori from her doze. Turning on her uncomfortable bed, she stared out at the wall across from her that contained the grisly horrors within. Now that she had experienced an actual cell for twenty-four hours, she was never again going to complain about what the Seshanamitesh called a cell. A frown creased her brow, and she pushed herself up to a seated position.
She hadn’t seen anyone at all in hours. She was interrogated late into the morning, plied with questions she couldn’t possibly know the answers to, and then had blood and skin samples taken later in the day. Everly was the only one who even tried to talk to her like a human being, and because it was too late for her to feel anything but a deep resentment toward anyone associated with the Corp, she ignored him and his phony-ass remorse until he finally gave up and left. Otherwise, her captivity had been uneventful. She slept on and off with no other purpose, waking only to eat the food slid into her cell.
There hadn’t been any activity for a while, so the sudden illumination in the outer room beyond the cells and the echo of many feet racing down the hall on the other side of the door surprised her.
Pressing her chest against the front of her cell, she craned her neck in attempt to get a view of the door. Whatever was coming, they were in a hurry to get it there. She jumped in surprise when the doors burst open, slamming against the walls. A dozen guards piled in, their frantic shouts filling the room as they struggled with whatever was contained between them.
Patricks came in after them, an excited look on his face that made her stomach sink. Anything that him that happy and everyone else in the room nervous was bad news. She had little doubt that it could be anything other than a Seshanamitesh, and given that males were the only ones attacking the colony, a hunter. Her stomach dropped, knowing exactly what that now meant for her immediate future now that they actually caught one as Patricks had promised.
“Over there! Put it over there in the cell,” he barked.
Lori froze as the group hurried toward her with a massive net between them. They froze for a moment when a medic hollered for them to wait.
The same medic who had examined her rushed forward, his dark hair flopping in his eyes as he pulled his gloves on and lifted a needle containing some sort of clear fluid in his hand.
“Hold it still,” he called out. “I have to find a spot where the scales are thinnest under its jaw so the needle can puncture.”
Muscles tensed, and curses filled the air as the guards locked in tightly together, their arms and legs straining as the medic leaned over in a small space provided for him. A thrashing sound and a volatile hiss later, and everyone seemed to relax as one.
Lori guessed whatever they gave their captive must have worked.
“Quickly,” the medic instructed, “put it in the cell before it wakes. It will be a few hours yet before I have the equipment ready to sex it.”
“That means you are on call, gentlemen,” Patricks said as he followed them toward her cell. “Do not go far because you will be required to move that thing in and out of containment.”
The automatic volley of “yes, sirs” made Lori grind her teeth, but she watched silently as they approached and carried their burden into the cell next to hers. The net was dropped toward the rear of the cell, and half of the guards left it there while those remaining worked to cut through the rope with their knives.
Wrapping her arms around her waist, Lori shuffled back to the center of her room, unable to resist trying to get a look at her new roommate. All she could see, however, were the uniformed backs of the guards and huge lengths of rope that were cut away, wound up, and handed off to another guard standing just behind them. Even so, she was unable to look away, her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth, until they finally drew back leaving a coiled mess of a Seshanamitesh unconscious on the floor.
She couldn’t see his face since one wing had been left open at a strange angle that obscured his features so that all she could see was the deep autumnal russet-orange of its scales. The tip of his tail twitched, and Patricks laughed, drawing her gaze to where he stood at the other side of the barrier between them.
He nodded toward the Seshanamitesh. “How do you like your new cellmate? I think the guards are starting to place bets on whether or not you can take him. And to think that this is a small snake,” he chuckled.
She swallowed back the nausea that rose up. “Hard to say since you shot him up with something,” she replied. She couldn’t deny that being locked up with one of the aliens attacking the colony left her feeling faint. On the other hand, she knew she had less to fear from Seshanamitesh than she did from the man standing outside of her cell. She peered over at Patricks and curled her lip at him. “But from what I can tell, they’re still better than the asshole of a snake standing on the other side of the wall.”
His face darkened for a moment, but it passed. Within the next breath, he laughed her comment off and tipped his head toward her. She turned her head away, preferring to look at the male confined with her.
Although she knew that he was incapable of raping her, she really hoped that he didn’t try to eat her instead.
“Since you feel that way, I’ll let you get friendly with a bit of peace and privacy. I say you have about… oh, five minutes before that thing wakes up. Enjoy, Citizen Straford,” he called back as he strode out of the room, leaving her alone with this unconscious alien.
She eyed the male, only half-aware that she was counting his breaths, her own breathing altering until it was in time with his as she waited anxiously. At last, the long body shifted, and the tail stretched out, the wings fanning wide blocking off her view of his entire body, but from his tail alone she was able to agree that he wasn’t as big as Slengral who seemed to be on the slightly larger end of average for his species from what he told her.
Slowly the wings drew back, and groggy citrine eyes blinked open, the pupil expanding and narrowing as it focused on her. Lori’s breath caught in her throat, her eyes tearing.
“Lori?” he rasped, and his wings trembled as his eyes lifted and slid around their cage.
“Kehtal!”
She rushed forward to console him until she noticed that he wasn’t afraid but enraged. Eyes flashing, his head snapped toward her and he quickly—if somewhat clumsily due to the drugs in his system—hurried over to the other side of the wall separating them.
“Lori, you are safe,” he hissed. His head swiveled again, his gavo rising before he looked once at her. “We are captured. What is this place?” He flattened a hand against the clear wall and bared his fangs in frustration only to jerk back when the door automatically opened an inch from his hand.
Covering the remaining distance between them, Lori ran through the door and threw her arms around him, crushing him to her. He swayed a little, but his arms and wings folded around her, taking the cue.
“I will explain everything,” she whispered.