Page 9 of Under the Iron Sky

They’d—

Crunch.

Soraya’s body froze. Her heart with it.

Silence, and just as she thought she’d imagined it—

Crunch.

Crunch.

The eggs were hatching.

No. They were supposed to have weeks before this lot matured, but all around her the mounds had begun to shake. Some already had tiny teeth and hooked claws poking through.

A ball of black scales the size of a kitten shot out. Soraya ducked, watching in silent disbelief as the creature jerked on the ground, its tiny bones clacking together as it worked out which way its too-long limbs were supposed to be. It’d just righted itself when another jumped onto the floor. And another.

And another.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

There was no more time. Soraya had to arm the last bomb and get out of there. Now.

There was no use shooting the hatchlings—one spark of blaring Light would be all it’d take in this dark hellscape to draw the queen’s attention right to her, and she didn’t plan on having Noah scrape what was left of her bones off the floor to take back to base.

Soraya hurriedly stepped over the hatchlings and to the final clutch, twisting the bomb as she went.

Luckily stalkers were born blind, but she had seconds before they caught her scent. She finished arming the bomb, delicately placing it at the foot of the last pile before backing away—

Pain seared across the back of her calf. Soraya bit her bottom lip hard to keep from screaming. She hadn’t thought she’d made a sound, but Noah’s panicked voice was suddenly saying on her wrist, “Raya? Are you all right?”

No, she bloody was not! The creature might’ve been tiny, but its teeth were already sharp as freshly keened knives, and one bite was more than enough to send warm blood sliding down the back of her leg. As small as it was, one punch to the head with a spiked knuckle-duster was enough to end the thing, but it’d barely fallen to the ground before a second stalker latched on to her forearm.

Soraya pulled a dagger from her waist and disposed of the creature, but then a third bit into her thigh. A fourth leaped onto her chest. A fifth. A sixth.

She killed each hatchling as quickly as it attacked, the world a blur of steel and black blood, but for each one she killed, two more took its place. And they just kept coming. Kept leaping onto her body and biting and clawing until she could no longer stand.

They swarmed on top of her the moment her back hit the ground.

Soraya forced air into her nose and out of her mouth as she slashed and punched in every direction. Then the hatchlings climbed onto her face.

Don’t scream. It was all she could think. Don’t alert the queen. Don’t scare Noah.

Soraya tried not to panic. She didn’t want to spend her last moments as a screaming little girl, but she couldn’t move. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe from the weight of them on top of her—

Death came with a flash of bright light, and everything suddenly vanished. The weight of the creatures. The teeth. The pain remained though, which Soraya thought was odd. Wasn’t death supposed to take that in the end?

The hatchlings were scurrying away when she opened her eyes. A single pup lay at her feet, a scorched hole in the center of its body, and Soraya’s head snapped to where Noah was still perched, the barrel of his sunrifle smoking in the darkness.

An ear-splitting roar pierced the air, then the ground began to shudder.

The queen was on the hunt.

Soraya sprang into action. Shoot. Shield. Roll. Shoot. Shield. Roll. She repeated the movements again and again as she raced toward the exit point, her body following the sequence as easily as breathing after all these years.

But the queen was fast.

Soraya ducked into the nearest carriage just before the queen could tear into her back. She sprinted to the opposite side, ignoring the shaking walls and gray claws the size of her arm reaching in after her. She’d barely made it to the last row of chairs before the compartment jolted, and those steel-like talons sliced through the east and west wall.