Page 24 of Moon Chosen

“No, pup! Stop!” Holding the torch in one hand and the crossbow in the other, Nik rushed after the pup, trying to keep him within the circle of light.

And he did. Nik did keep the pup in sight, until he reached the fallen log, which shivered, morphing from a harmless broken branch into a dozen deadly beetles, each almost the size of the Terrier, whose panicked barking was filling the circle of light. The insects turned their dripping scarlet-colored mandibles at Nik, and with a terrible clicking sound, descended on him.

“Pup, come!” Nik shouted, forced to stop his pursuit of the canine by the blood beetles. “Inside!” he called again, but the pup didn’t pause. He sped forward. Without another look at Nik, the forest swallowed him. “No!” Nik screamed in despair.

Two of the giant beetles broke from the group descending on Nik and skittered after the young canine. Nik automatically ran to intercept them, but the rest of the beetles had closed around him, cutting him off from the pup and from the safety that waited with the lift.

Nik raised the crossbow and aimed, trying to find a shot that would take out more than one of the bugs, but they were coming at him—fast and with deadly intent. He only had seconds to make his decision—if they reached him, if they broke his skin with their disease-filled jaws, chances were very good that Nik would die.

Shouting his anger and frustration, Nik turned from the forest and shot the biggest of the creatures that crouched between him and the lift. As it writhed in agony and shrieked its piercing death song, Nik ran to it. With a rush of stinking gore, he jerked the arrow free from its body, and vaulted over it. The two bugs following close on his heels fell on their wounded brother and began to slice him into devourable pieces.

Nik sprinted across the clearing to the ancient brass bell that was mounted beside the lift and pulled its rope, once, twice, thrice, sending a clarion of warning pealing up into the trees. Then he slammed closed the door of the cage, latching Cameron safely inside, and waved the torch wildly.

The lift immediately began up and, resolutely, Nik climbed to the top of the torch holder log and faced the blood beetles that were closing a circle around him.

“Come get me, you bastards! Let’s see how many of you I can kill with this one arrow!” Nik notched the crossbow and waited until two of the beetles fell into line and he squeezed the trigger.Thwap!

“Three down. Seven to go. I like the odds.” Nik jabbed the torch at the mandibles of the first of the creatures to reach his log, and it screamed, skittering back. “Fried bug! You know, the Lynx Tribe says it’s a delicacy—can’t stomach it myself. Just like I can’t stomach cats!” Nik shouted the words as he swung the torch like a bat. He connected with the armored head of a beetle, cracking its skull. While the bugs feasted on another of their brothers, Nik glanced up at the lift. He thought he could see that it had reached the landing, but before he could be sure a noise pulled his attention back to the carnage around him and his stomach tightened in horror.

The forest floor had begun to quiver as the true carnivores of the night crawled within the circle of Nik’s light. Bigger even than the blood beetles and drawn by the scent of gore, the death’s head roaches swarmed, covering the bodies of the first bug Nik had skewered and the two who were still tearing its body to pieces. More shrieks of agony filled the night as the roaches began moving closer and closer to Nik, devouring everything in their path.

Nik weighed his chances quickly. The lift would be sent back for him, but probably not before the fucking roaches reached him. He’d sounded the emergency bell, so Companions would be answering the summons, but probably not before the fucking roaches reached him.

And then there was the pup. Was he still alive? Was he being attacked by beetles or devoured by roaches? Or had something even more dangerous lured him into the forest? Could Nik save him?

“Well, I’m sure as hell not leaving him out here,” Nik said grimly. He’d have one chance at getting past the roaches while they were distracted by the beetles. He gathered himself, preparing to launch from the log and over as many of the damn bugs as possible, when the sky above him opened, raining fiery arrows into the seething mass of insects.

The shrieks of the roaches and beetles were deafening, and the stench of burning bugs almost made Nik gag. Then Companions began rappelling from the trees, each with thick wooden clubs in their hands and their Shepherds strapped to their backs. Legs covered by bark armor, the Companions formed a tight circle around Nik and began beating back the insects and clearing the way to the lift, which was careening downward to retrieve them all.

“With us, Nik! Move to the lift!” A Companion named Wilkes, Leader of the Warriors, smashed his club into the skull of a beetle and then kicked it so that its body was tossed backward into the horde of roaches while his Shepherd lunged, grasped a roach in his strong jaws, shaking the insect until its body ripped in two, spraying blood and insect parts around him and his Companion like macabre rain.

“I can’t! The pup’s out there!”

“The pup? The male pup?” Wilkes said.

“Yes! He took off when the beetles attacked. I have to go after him.”

“No time. Get on the lift, Nik,” Wilkes said.

“But he’s still out there!”

“Wilkes, they’re swarming. We can’t keep holding ’em off much longer,” said Monroe as his Shepherd ripped open the belly of a beetle.

Snatches of the light from the full moon touched the flesh-colored wings of the roaches and the rust-colored armor of the beetles, and as they roiled together the forest floor became a sea alive with insects.

“Nik, there’s no time. Get into the lift,” Wilkes ordered him.

“I can’t leave him!”

“He’s already dead! Nothing could survive that!” Wilkes gestured out at the writhing forest floor. “Get into the lift. Now.”

Nik allowed the tide of Companions to force him into the lift and as they began the laborious journey up to safety, he clenched the wooden bars in his hands, stared down at the seething horde below them, and shouted his misery into the night. “No! Pup! Noooooooo!”

8

Mari stretched the aching muscles of her back, rubbing her shoulders and rolling her head from side to side. She glanced at the dawn hole, and thought she saw a slight lightening. On the heels of the rush of happiness the thought of her mother returning home brought, Mari realized that time had utterly escaped her, and she had spent the entire night working on perfecting the sketch of her father, which was the one drawing she absolutely could not show her mother. Hastily, she set the drying piece aside and replaced it with the one Leda would expect to see. She exchanged the quill for sharpened charcoal. Clearing her tired mind, she pictured her mother’s delicate hands in her imagination, and got to work.

The sound of rustling undergrowth outside the cave door pulled her attention from her almost finished sketch. Automatically, she checked the hole and then smiled with pleasure. The weak light of foggy dawn was finally filtering gray from above.