Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 110492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 552(@200wpm)___ 442(@250wpm)___ 368(@300wpm)
From where she was crouching, she could see to the front of the shuttle where Vic was working the complicated instruments to get them landed. The minute the ship touched down, he opened the shuttle door. He had a gun in one hand and Torri heard the nearly silent shots like hissing sounds as blasts of blue light exploded from its muzzle.
There were shouts from outside the shuttle and for a moment, she had the hope that maybe Vic could shoot enough of them to get free so they could take off again and fly out of the massive black ship that had swallowed them up. But then a huge, gray-skinned warrior loomed up in the doorway of the shuttle.
Torri’s heart leapt into her throat at the sight of the new adversary.
Oh my God—he has to be nine or ten feet tall!
The huge Scourge warrior was covered from head to toe in black metal armor but strangely, he didn’t seem to have a gun like Vic did. Maybe he was big enough that he didn’t think he needed one, Torri thought.
Vic shot at the Scourge warrior, but the blasts of blue light didn’t seem to have any effect. Either they were bouncing off the huge warrior’s armor or else he just didn’t mind getting shot. It was hard to tell which by his face, which was mostly covered by an enormous black metal helmet, but his red-on-black eyes had a dead, blank expression, as though he didn’t feel anything at all.
Vic shot him once more and then the warrior raised one huge, metal-covered fist and Torri saw an enormous silver spike suddenly pop out from the warrior’s middle knuckle.
It looked like a single, deadly claw but Torri only caught a glimpse of it because the next moment, in a blur of motion, the massive warrior made a lunging, underhanded punch and buried the long spike in Vic’s chest.
“No!” Torri gasped, forgetting she was supposed to be in hiding. She couldn’t take her eyes off the horrible sight in front of her, which now seemed to be happening in slow motion.
She saw the bloody end of the silver spike appear, coming out of Vic’s back and thought, his heart! That’s right where his heart is! Oh God—he stabbed him in the heart!
Then the monstrous Scourge raised his fist high, lifting Vic’s still-jerking body into the air in a sick gesture of triumph. The sleek sliver gun the big Kindred had been using dropped from his limp fingers back onto the seat behind him.
“No!” Torri gasped again and tears began to blur her eyes. At the same time, fury took over her body. She jumped over the couch and barreled forward, screaming wordlessly as she ran.
Scooping up the gun on instinct, she pointed it as the huge warrior and began shooting.
“You bastard, let him go! Let him go!” she shrieked at the enormous Scourge.
The cold, dead eyes looked at her without expression. Suddenly the bloody metal spike was retracted and Vic’s body fell to the ground with a horrible thud that Torri knew she would hear in her nightmares the rest of her life.
She was distracted for a moment by the sight of the man she loved, lying motionless on the ground. Vic’s blue eyes were open but sightless, staring up at her like doll’s eyes—glass eyes. He didn’t move, even when she cried his name.
“Vic! Vic, please!” she begged but there was no response—just those dead eyes looking at her and the ragged wound in the left side of his chest where the dark blue shirt had turned a sodden purple with his blood.
“You killed him!” Torri tore her eyes from the terrible sight and focused on the enormous Scourge warrior. She raised the gun again and started blasting. “You killed him! You killed him!” she shrieked over and over, not even noticing the way the blue energy beams were bouncing off the huge warrior’s armor. “YOU KILLED HIM!”
She didn’t even care when the silver spike shot out of the massive fist again. She was past caring about anything but the man she had grown to love in such a short period of time. Past anything but the horrible grief and rage that dominated her mind completely.
The spike drew back for another killing blow, its bloody tip glittering in the greenish light of the Fathership.
“Stop! Stop it, you vat-grown fool!” a loud voice shouted. “You’ve already killed the scout—we need to keep the girl alive so that the AllFather can scan her! We must know what the Kindred are doing here, so near our latest prey.”
The huge warrior froze, its mailed fist arrested in mid-air. At the same time, someone knocked the gun out Torri’s hands. Turning her head, she saw it was the gray-skinned man with the red-on-black eyes that had appeared earlier on the viewscreen.