Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
The women and children can be put in the safe room, Dominic suggested.
Instantly, every instinct screamed no. That was certain death for all of them. The safe room wasn’t any safer than where they were.
Better to keep them together in a tight circle, children in the middle, their mothers surrounding them, warriors ringing them, she said hastily. The amulet was nearly burning her hand. Watch the ceiling. They’ll drop down from above. Can you construct an impenetrable dome around them? A shield that cannot be penetrated from above, below or any direction.
The sense of urgency was on her. They had only a few precious seconds. The male Carpathians indicated for the women to circle the children. It was Dominic and Zacarias who wove the protective bubble around their loved ones. Solange objected to remaining inside, but Dominic was adamant that should danger break through, the women were the last protection for the children. He was smart enough not to mention that she was pregnant.
I would prefer you to be inside, Tomas said.
I would not be as useful to you, she pointed out. A silly part of her was pleased that he wanted her protected, just as the other women were.
Before he could reply, she heard the wings and the scratching of clawed feet. They are coming.
Mage-born from the underworld, Luiz reminded. Expect anything and know they were made specifically to kill our women and children, so venom will be lethal.
What are we facing, Sarika? Tomas asked calmly. Identify them now.
The confidence he had in her, that she could do such a thing, astounded her and at the same time galvanized her into further action. The scraping was louder. She listened with her acute hearing.
Beetles, she identified. Then the knowledge swept through her. She’d seen this before. Mitro had used such a clever and diabolical trick against her people. Swarms of the insects had descended on them from below the ground, the trees, the dirt. Bombardier beetles.
The beetles normally wouldn’t kill a human being. The explosive material they mixed in their double abdomens to become a chemical to defeat their enemies was irritating to humans but not, as a rule, deadly. Unless a mage added to the potency. She had seen the results of the tiny insects swarming over children and infants, their exploding bombs shot with deadly accuracy to burn their victims.
As a rule, the beetles could be the size of a fingertip or up to one inch in length. They most often had red heads, legs and antennae and dark abdomens. She had encountered such beetles on two different treks in Africa, but she knew they were common throughout the world.
They can shoot their chemical bombs in rapid bursts from a distance or slow, precise blasts. The material is caustic, very hot, an acid-like substance. At best, without a mage enhancing these beetles, it would burn and irritate your skin. But I witnessed the damage they caused. The blasts killed anyone the material touched in a very painful way.
She felt the slight disdain of the ancient Carpathian hunters. They fought vampires and demons. Hellhounds and mages. They had fought Lilith’s army from hell on several occasions. She found it strange that she knew their emotions when they had no knowledge of those feelings—in fact, didn’t believe they had them. It was clearly a disconnect that happened as the Carpathian male aged. From what little information she’d gathered, their emotions began to fade and then completely disappear. Some far quicker than others.
The idea that they would be battling insects had to be laughable to them when they had spent so much time fighting larger-than-life enemies. A beetle, compared to a hellhound, did not seem very dangerous.
The walls and floor erupted with armies of beetles—so many, hundreds, perhaps a thousand, maybe even more. They were everywhere, crawling across the floor like a relentless wave of red, eyes fixed on their prey. They appeared to be a moving carpet as they assumed a formation of side-by-side rows.
On the trees above their heads, more beetles emerged, running along the leaves, working to get their bombs mixed, no easy task. Two chemicals, hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone, are stored in separate reservoirs in the abdomen. The chemicals pass through a valve to mix in a special chamber along with a special enzyme that effectuates the reaction. Gases rapidly expand and give off heat. The beetles are able to open and close the valves so fast they could produce five hundred bursts in a second.
Sarika thought the bombardier beetles looked as if they were on steroids.
Jubal, they aren’t attacking you or me, only Carpathians. They’ve been programmed to kill Carpathian men, women and children. I assumed because several of the women are jaguar that they were targets. But it is anyone Carpathian.
Jubal’s head came up alertly, and he swung around to first look at her and then at the attacking insects. So many of them. The ancients had set shields around themselves, but the bombs were acid and, after so many hits, seemed to be weakening the protective layers around the hunters. Clearly, the mages responsible for mutating the beetles were prepared for the kinds of shields the Carpathians would use. She knew there were vampires in the underworld. They would have knowledge of what kinds of protections the ancients would use, and they would prepare their beetles to get through those defenses.