Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Jovo picked up a machete, swung it a couple of times, and tossed it over his shoulder. A big ugly knife was next. He waved it around, and over the shoulder it went. It would be almost comically cute if it weren’t for the rotting corpses.
Bear stared up ahead, at the darkness beyond.
“What is it?” I whispered.
The shepherd went still, focused on something in the gloom. She didn’t woof though.
At the bottom, Jovo raised two small, curved blades. They had six-inch blades shaped like claws and rings in their handles. There was a specific name for that kind of knife… care… kura… karambit. That was it. The style of the knife originated in Southeast Asia.
Those were Ximena’s backup blades. She was a pulse carver, a burst damage dealer with enhanced speed who slashed at her opponents. She was like a whirlwind on the battlefield, and now she was dead, decomposing below.
Did we actually have a chance to win a fight with the gress? Or was I deluding myself?
Jovo slid his fingers through the rings in the handle, holding the blades out, and sliced the air in two vicious, lightning-fast strikes.
Okay.
Jovo spun on one foot, danced across the rocky ground, cutting and carving, and leapt into the air spinning like a windmill. The twin blades flashed as he sliced his imaginary opponents in twin X slashes and landed in a crouch.
Holy shit. How the hell had the gress even caught him?
Jovo straightened, looked at the knives, let out a giggle, and bounced from paw to paw, doing a little happy dance.
Bear’s black lips trembled. She let out a low, grumbling growl.
“Jovo!”
The lees was still bouncing and waving his knives around.
The darkness at the edge of the chamber shifted.
Bear snarled.
“Jovo!” I waved at him frantically. “Up! Up!”
Jovo glanced at me.
“Dangerous! Up!”
Bear broke into barks, snarling.
The shape within the darkness lunged forward.
Jovo leaped at the wall and scrambled up as if he had a ladder. A blink and he was thirty feet up, then fifty.
A creature stalked into the open, its lunge aborted at the last moment. It was definitely feline, but as big as an SUV, with the broad build of a jaguar. Its stocky frame rippled with muscle that shifted and bulged as it walked. Its dense fur was like nothing I had ever seen. Each hair started with a deep ruby, then darkened toward the end into tar black. Like a smoke-colored cat, except that smoke cats of our world went white to black and their coloring was solid, while this creature’s pelt shifted as it walked, the multicolored fur forming rosettes and stripes that vanished with the next step. Its paws were enormous, as big as my head, and they had too many toes.
Jovo shot up the wall, conquered the last dozen feet, and landed on the bridge next to me.
The beast below tilted its huge head and stared at us, its eyes a malevolent, terrible green.
I put my hand on Bear’s back. The shepherd clicked her mouth closed and glared at the monster.
This thing did not belong in the breach. Every animal that was a native part of this ecosystem – the stalkers, the goats, the bugs - was grey, blue, or purple with fluorescence or a flash of contrasting color here and there. The only exception was the red Grasping Hand, but that was a stationary invertebrate. It didn’t hunt or roam.
This cat didn’t fit the color scheme and that fur said it was a forest predator. It was as alien to the caves as Jovo and I.
There was a frightening intelligence in those eyes. It reminded me of Bear, the new upgraded version. When I looked into my dog’s eyes, something more than a typical canine intelligence looked back. This creature was like that: smart and cunning.
The giant cat took a step back, turned soundlessly, and vanished back into the gloom.
Now I knew why the corpses hadn’t been eaten.
“Skelzhar,” Jovo hissed.
I pointed at him. “Jovo…”
The fox shook his head and touched his chest. “Lees.” He pointed at the beast. “Skelzhar.”
Species name.
He pulled his marble out and squeezed it. Five gress walking out of the darkness, two skelzhars flanking them like hounds. When I compared it to Bear, I had no idea how right I was.
“Dan-je-rous,” Jovo said carefully.
The gress by itself was bad enough. This took it to another level.
I stood up. “Let’s get moving.”
11
The stench of decomposition started as a faint whiff of cloying odor. It drifted from the warren of passages and tunnels. The farther we walked, the stronger it became.
Jovo waved his hand in front of his nose.
I nodded. It stank.
We kept moving. This part of the breach resembled the inside of a sponge: short roundish chambers connected by a myriad of shorter tunnels, endlessly intersecting. My senses told me we were getting closer and closer to the anchor. It had to be less than a mile away.