Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 94582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94582 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 473(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
There was no answer from within the crumbling building, but Sky thought maybe she could hear someone stirring.
“Please, I promise I’m not here to hurt you,” she called. “In fact, I’m hoping maybe we can help each other. It’s just me—can’t we talk?”
More stirring but still no answer. And then Sky heard a sound that made her blood run cold.
“Told you I saw a female come down here. What do you say, boys—should we have a little fun with her?”
The dim light at the mouth of the alley was suddenly blacked out by several large figures.
Male figures, Sky realized as she stared at them. Mother of Serpents, they were certainly larger than the puny Serpentine males she was used to!
Still, she wasn’t one to cower from a conflict.
“Stay back,” she told them, doing her best to sound menacing. “I’ve got a blaster pointed at your heads and I’m not afraid to use it.”
Suddenly a blinding beam of light probed the alley, making her squint and her eyes water.
“It’s a female all right,” one of the males said. “Lookit that ass!”
“And she’s got a blaster, does she?” mocked one of the males. “Oh, I’m scared boys—I’m shaking in me boots!”
“She’s a tender little morsel, ain’t she?” replied another. “Did you get a look at them tits? Like to suck on them, I would!”
Sky had had just about enough of this. Though she was still half-blinded by the brilliant search-lamp they were pointing at her, she aimed her blaster straight at the figures blocking the alleyway, right into the middle of the crowd of males. Then she pulled the trigger.
The blue blaster beam illuminated them for a split second and she saw there were five of them—all dressed in filthy rags with hungry expressions on their lean, dirty faces.
One of them howled and grabbed at his upper arm, which was smoking from the blast.
“My arm! She got me in the arm!”
“Stay back if you don’t want the next one right between your eyes,” Sky said, keeping her voice calm and cool.
“Ware, boys—she really is armed!” one of the males shouted.
“Get Shazzer—he’ll know what to do with her!” yelled another.
The males at the end of the alley scattered for a moment and Sky was just about to make a break for it and run back to the ship, when an even bigger shape took their place.
Sky’s eyes widened as she took in this new opponent. He was tall—taller even than Torin—and hugely muscular. Also, if her eyes and the shadows weren’t deceiving her, he had three heads.
“What in the Underworld?” she muttered under her breath. She’d never seen anything like the enormous male before her! She estimated he would be a good head and shoulders taller that Torin—if the big Kindred was here. And to be honest, she was beginning to wish he was. Maybe she should have let him tag along after all…
“You like that, girly?” shouted a voice that came from behind the huge male blocking the end of the alley. “This here’s Shazzer—leastways, that’s what we calls his middle head, cause it does all the thinking. The other two are Biter and Grinder but they don’t talk much. He’s a Trollox, he is.”
The search light flickered over the enormous male and Sky could see why the two outer heads didn’t talk—both their mouths were a nightmare. They each had two sets of long, yellow tusks that looked razor sharp which took up most of their mouths. The tusks protruded from their thick, rubbery lips and curved both upwards and downward. Their eyes were dull and stupid-looking, filled with a kind of animal hunger that made Sky’s stomach twist into a slick fist.
The middle head didn’t have tusks but its glowing yellow eyes were much more intelligent—horribly so, Sky thought. It was like seeing a massive predator which had somehow learned to think and reason.
“See that, Shazzer?” one of the smaller males said. “That Mistress down there, she shot me! Shot me right in the arm, she did, when I hadn’t even done nothin’ to her!”
“Shot you, did she?” Shazzer’s voice was like boulders grinding together on a riverbed—so deep, Sky felt it more than she heard it.
“Shot me—yes, she did!” the other male exclaimed. “Now what are we going to do about that, Shazzer?”
“Gonna get her,” the middle head said, its deep voice grinding against Sky’s eardrums menacingly. “First we fucks her…then we eats her.”
As Shazzer spoke, one enormous arm as big as Sky’s whole torso came forward and the Trollox rubbed a positively huge bulge in his crotch.
“Yes, so you should, so you should!” the other male exclaimed. “Only don’t eat her until the rest of us get to fuck her too, right?”
“Yes—we all get a turn, so we do!” another said.
Sky began to feel sick. She was used to handling herself in tight situations, but this exceeded anything she’d ever taken on before. A gang of scale thieves or skin-cloners was nothing to the massive nightmare blocking the end of the alley.