Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
The guard made a sound like “Whoof!” and doubled over as her blow knocked the breath out of him. Before he could get it back again, V sprang at him, grabbing the long silver knife from his hand and punching the NeverBreeder square in the face. Then he pulled out his blaster and shot, vaporizing the bastard’s head.
The headless body fell backwards, the legs in their silver jumpsuit still twitching.
“Oh my God!” Penelope’s voice was low and shaky. “Oh my God, oh my God!”
“It’s all right, sweetheart!” V re-holstered his blaster in the belt holster he’d taken from one of the dead NeverBreeders in the jungle and went to her. “Everything is okay,” he told her, wanting to reassure her.
“I…I’m not sure that it is.” Penelope shook her head. “I…I feel so dizzy, V’rex.”
“It’s just shock. Here, let’s get you sitting down.” V started to reach for her and then realized he was still holding the NeverBreeder’s knife in his other hand. He started to toss it aside and then he took a closer look at it.
Running down the wickedly sharp blade was a single drop of crimson blood.
Eighty-Six
“Fuck!” V’rex was looking with horror at the NeverBreeder’s knife. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Penny asked faintly. She was getting that breathless feeling again—the same one she’d had when they first entered the Deadly Jungle, before everything had gone gray and far away. “Why…why can’t I breathe?” she asked, her voice coming out as a gasp.
V’rex dropped the knife and lifted her chin to examine the side of her neck.
“The fucker wasn’t lying, I guess.” He sounded grim. He touched her neck carefully and his fingertips came away bloody. “He barely scratched you but the blade must have been poisoned, like he said.”
“Oh, no!” Penny exclaimed, but her voice came out in a breathless gasp. “Does that mean you’ll have to…to…sting me?”
“Afraid so, sweetheart.” He looked like a man who was about to make himself do something he really, really didn’t want to do. “Still, we’re out of the jungle now,” he muttered, sounding like he was talking to himself. “Maybe that will help.”
“Help what?” Penny tried to ask, but her throat had closed almost completely by now. She tried to suck in a breath but it was like breathing through a straw. Frantically, she clawed at her throat.
Can’t breathe—can’t breathe!
“Hang on, sweetheart—I’m hoping this won’t hurt you this time,” V’rex murmured.
And then he was pulling her into his arms and Penny felt the blunt, fiery probe of his stinger skewering the tender side of her neck.
At once, she was on fire! The pain she’d experience the past two times he’d stung her was nothing to this. This was a burning everywhere—her nerves, her flesh, even her very bones were being incinerated in the most horrific agony imaginable!
This is Hell—I’m in Hell, Penny thought. Her throat opened up at last and she sucked in a double lungful of air and expelled it in a shriek of pure torture. She couldn’t even form the words to ask the big Hybrid to stop stinging her. All she could do was writhe and shriek while she burned and burned and burned…
And then everything went dark as her body and brain overloaded from the pain and she fell down the blessed well of unconsciousness.
Eighty-Seven
V despised himself. As he held Penelope’s limp body in his arms, shame and self-hatred rose in him so strongly it made him physically ill. He had felt the unbearable pain his sting had caused her and it was as though he had stood by and watched himself carve her flesh with a knife while she screamed.
He wanted to throw back his head and howl, to tear out his hair or cut his own flesh or perform some other kind of self-flagellation to atone for the agony he had brought to his love.
Though he knew what he had done was necessary to save her, he still wanted to die. To cause such horrible pain to the female he loved was almost unbearable—the Kindred side of him wanted to end things.
It was the Kru’ell One half of him that kept him going—kept him from harming or killing himself after he had committed what felt like a physical assault on the woman he loved.
You did what you had to in order to save her, that half of him informed V. And if you kill yourself for it, who’s going to pilot her safely home? She still needs you, V—even if your sting is painful to her now. She still can’t get back to her home world without you.
The dry, practical voice in his skull saved him from doing something he would have regretted later—if he even lived to regret it. Carefully, he laid Penelope in the passenger’s seat, which was only a little too small for her, whereas the pilot’s chair was way too small for V, having been built for NeverBreeder dimensions.