Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Sixteen, Part One

 Notes: I love monsters. I just do. And my kiddo loves bugs, so this one is a cross-inspiration ;)

Title: Hadrian's Colony, Chapter Sixteen, Part One

***

Chapter Sixteen, Part One

 

 

Photo by Viktor Talashuk

Kieron was intimately familiar with terror.

He knew the terror of deep space, being on the edge of the universe clamped between nothingness and near-death. He knew the terror of growing up without an anchor, no parent to protect and guide him. He knew the terror of living among people who hated him, of loneliness, of loss. He knew the terror of loving someone so much that the thought of their death was worse than any fate he himself could suffer. And yet…

He’d never known a terror like this before.

The ground rippled like a wave behind their ship, more sharp black wedges breaking the surface, and Kieron braced himself against the ceiling with both hands as Carlisle suddenly blasted the engines, jerking the ship straight up and spinning it at the same time. Alarms blared wildly, screaming warnings as Carlisle got the narrow ship to turn end-over-end down the canyon—toward the beast that was trying to eat them, but he barely had time to catch his breath before he realized that a shift had gone on. The sine wave-motion the creature was traveling in took it smoothly beneath them as they flew up and over, and Kieron had just enough time to see what looked like the head of the beast, consisting of a wide, flattened maw edged in those terrible shovel-teeth, burst through the ground and flail as it tried to catch them.

It failed, but it wasn’t giving up. Even as they straightened out and Carlisle punched up their speed, the beast dove back through the rocky crust and into the ground, which shifted like sand in the places it had already tunneled once before.

“Get us out of here!” he shouted at Carlisle.

“We need to stay in the canyons,” she shouted back, and—what the fuck?

“Why!?”

Carlisle didn’t reply, just kept checking her instruments as she sent out ping after ping in an effort to read the limits of the walls that surrounded them.

Kieron resisted the urge to keep questioning her. Whatever her reasoning was, he had to let her get on with it unless he wanted to fight her away from the controls, which—bad idea in the middle of a chase. He glanced back, but the tiny viewport at the stern of the ship didn’t give him much of a view. Deciding to be useful, he took a second to clamp the General’s chair down. As little as he liked the man, he liked the thought of being smashed by his power chair even less.

A sudden turn to the left happened sharply enough to send Kieron flying into the wall. A new plethora of alarms began to sound, these ones indicating structural damage to the ship, as they straightened out once more.

“Find a place to sit,” Carlisle yelled to him.

It was tempting to just stay where he was on the floor, but Kieron was stricken with an incurable need to know what the hell was going on. He didn’t want to die without knowing it was coming, and if that meant staring a monster in the mouth as it crunched him to pulp, then he was going to fucking stare it down. He crawled over to the copilot’s seat and hauled himself into it, buckling in with difficulty. Blobby got into his lap, and Kieron looked down at the little bot with concern. It was covered with blood. “You shouldn’t be able to bleed,” he said slowly.

“You’re bleeding,” Carlisle snapped. “Handle that head wound before you get spatter all over the control panel.”

Oh, shit, he was bleeding from the head again. Kieron winced as he tried to staunch it with his bad hand. Concussion, you’ve got a concussion. And none of these ships had Regen.

At least they seemed to be outpacing the tunneler, even if Carlisle wasn’t willing to let them leave these damn canyons. Still… “Take us up,” Kieron insisted.

“The second there’s space,” Carlisle said. “We should be clear in another minute or so. We just have to—fuck!” The entire ship rocked, and a second later there was a hideous wrench that felt like the floor was about to be ripped right out from under them. “That’s our back legs. Damn it.” She checked the readings again. “I thought we were faster than it.”

Kieron swallowed as he stared out the viewport. “That assumes there’s just the one of them.”

“How many can there be in here?”

He pointed. “At least one more.” And it was no more than a thousand feet ahead of them, rearing up and blocking the entire canyon with the breadth of its segmented frame. Hell, it was even larger than the last one. It reminded Kieron of a…what were those things on Trakta called…a centipede, that was it, only this centipede was wider than the freighter they were in and going to crush them if they didn’t—“Climb, now. Climb fast.”

“We’ll be shredded by the top!”

“The ship is fucked either way, but at least up there we won’t be eaten alive!”

Carlisle swore as she adjusted power to the engine, sending them skyrocketing upward at an angle that was almost sharp enough to scrape the belly of the ship against the belly of the beast. Fire flamed against it, but it didn’t seem to notice, and even as they rose up its massive head began to curl again, readying to crush them back down to the ground and carry them into the earth.

They would never be found. Elanus would never know what happened to him. The terror was sharper than any pain, flattening Kieron’s mind into nothing but a panicked buzz, love and hate and every other emotion lost to the overwhelm. Kieron clutched Blobby close and waited for the impact, and—

The scream of metal on stone filled his ears, and then he heard the whistle of wind on top of that. But they weren’t in the canyon anymore. They were above it, and the tunneling creature was falling away from them. They also didn’t have a left-side wall anymore.

“We won’t get far,” Carlisle screamed over the noise as she heaved the ship back toward the far side of the plateau. “Look for a spot that’s thick enough to hold us!”

Kieron did his best to look, he really did. But while adrenaline was keeping the pain away, he was still seeing double of everything, and he could barely breathe. All he could do now was hold onto his baby boy and watch as the jagged-edged canyon top came closer and closer.

Metal shrieked, rocks crumbled, and everything went dark.

 

Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Four

Notes: Angelo's almost here! Surely there's nothing to do but wait at this point...

Title: Lord of Unkindness: Chapter Thirty-Four

***

Chapter Thirty-Four

 

 

Photo by Nikolett Emmert

The level of pomp and circumstance that goes into preparing for Angelo’s visit is, frankly, excessive even for Victor Hambly.

Ciro, woken up far too early after such a late night, sits on one of the couches in his father’s office and watches as the place is transformed from starkly intimidating into something far more sumptuous and, frankly, far more powerful. In fact, it seems like his father is pulling every expensive artifact in the entire Tower into this one room. His assistants have their hands full finding places for them all, especially given the fact that Victor has what must be his entire pack of familiars crammed into the room as well, and the result in the end is a combination of haphazard luxury and zoophilia.

“What’s the point?” he mutters into his coffee.

Richard smacks the back of his head. “Shut up.” Richard was the one to wake him up this morning, and he accompanied Ciro from his room to Victor’s office. Apparently he’s been given the job of babysitter, and equally obviously he’s not happy about it. His cougar growls and snaps at Ciro’s raven, who hops from the back of the couch to the top of his head. His bird’s feet dig through his hair for purchase, and Ciro winces inside. A coil of golden magic soothes the pain, and he fights the urge to smile.

Angelo is on his way, and Ciro is done lying to himself about how he feels about it. He’s not happy Angelo is going to be walking into this awful place, but he’s confident that the man will at least be able to get himself out again. Victor might be a master manipulator, but Angelo has standing of his own, and magic that will protect him. It’s possible that he’ll come out on top in the confrontation that’s coming. And if he doesn’t…

Ciro presses one hand lightly to his stomach. His nerves feel like butterfly wings beating against his ribcage…or a distant flock of ravens. Given enough time, he can augment Angelo’s magic with his own. He can’t pull them through quickly, but he’s not helpless.

A minute later Nephele bursts through the door, a wave of rats following in her wake. Half of them swarm the couch Ciro is on, crawling across his lap and up his arms, while the others stay with his cousin as she stalks over to Victor.

“Uncle!” she hisses, coming to a halt in front of him and putting her hands on her hips. “Why don’t any of my spells work in this room?”

Wait, what?

Victor sips his coffee. “Interesting. What kind of spell were you attempting?”

“That’s not the point!”

He tilted his head consideringly. “It is if you’ve been under the impression that it’s all right to use magic in my private suites.”

“It’s…I…” Momentarily stymied, Nephele rallies. “Ciro is my fiancé! I just want to know where he is! I’m allowed!”

“You don’t tell me what’s allowed and what’s not,” Victor says coldly. “Don’t forget that. As for the spells…I’ve simply pulled something out of storage that I thought might be useful in this meeting. It gives people access only to their inherent magic, none of the extrapolations that come from it. That means you, and I, and the others of our kind will have our familiars here, but none of the spells we can glean from them. Similarly, Angelo will be limited in what he can do. I expect to learn a great deal about what kinnara are capable of today.”

Ciro forgets the cup in his hand, forgets the rats, forgets everything except the surge of panic he feels for Angelo. He doesn’t know how his father learned what Angelo is, but—

“A what?” Nephele asks with a frown.

“A very special magical creature.” Victor looks over at Ciro and must see the fear inside of him, because he smirks. “He doesn’t hide it as well as he thinks, and a little investigation into the remains of his parents’ home in California confirmed it. A kinnara…and he’s made you into his mate. Just perfect.”

Nephele slams her hand down on the desk. “Ciro is mine! He’s not some random witch’s mate!”

Victor gets to his feet and stares her down. “If you don’t—” They’re arguing, but Ciro doesn’t hear any of it. He’s too busy reaching out to Angelo, trying to communicate with him the way he did yesterday. The golden thread loops around the raven he sent to the other man and then Ciro is there, looking through its eyes. He sees Angelo inside a car, dressed in a formal black barong embroidered with gold thread. He hops onto his knee, sees Angelo look down at him.

“What’s wro—”

A scream of his name pulls him back to the office. In the midst of the argument between Victor and Nephele, Richard has left and returned—and he’s got Maria by the arm.

“Ciro!”

He shoots to his feet, then staggers and falls as Richard’s cougar leaps at him, forcing him down and sitting on his back to keep him from getting up. His raven flutters up near the ceiling, as desperate and confused as he is.

Maria looks awful—bruised, bloodied, and exhausted. And yet—“Are you okay?” she demands as she struggles against Richard’s grip. She glares at his father. “What the hell is wrong with you, treating your son like this? Do you really not care if he hates you?”

“Emotion is cheap,” Victor deigns to reply. “Ciro can feel whatever he likes. I own him, and you as well.”

Maria bares her teeth. “No one owns me.”

“Yet here you are, bound against your will.” He shrugs. “A little witch who doesn’t even have the power to manifest her own familiar is no threat to me. I’d honestly prefer to simplify my life and get rid of you right now, but if Mr. [name] is as sentimental as my son seems to think, you might have some use as a bargaining chip. So.” He looks at Richard. “I want her visible as he comes out of the elevator. He’s already been warned about what will happen to Ciro if he tries anything here, but let’s test his resolve. Stay with her after that, and if I send one of my familiars to you…” Victor looks at Maria again. “Push her over the rail. We’ll see if she’s lucky enough to survive a thirty-story drop.”

“Don’t!” Ciro shouts—tries to, but the cougar’s weight presses him hard into the floor, and her claws are sharp against his skin. “You don’t have to threaten her!”

“I know,” Victor replies. “But I want to.”

“Hey, fuck you, dude,” Maria snaps, her bound hands clenched into fists. “I hope you choke on your own fucking tie, you douchebag!”

Victor’s expression sours. “Get her out of here,” he says, and Richard drags Maria back out the door, kicking and shouting the whole way. Ciro wishes he had half of her fire; this shouldn’t be happening. If he only fought harder, if he only…

The cougar finally gets up and follows Victor out. Ciro scrambles to his feet to follow, but four snarling Dobermans block the door, snapping at his arms and legs and backing him up until he’s on the couch again. Nephele’s rats immediately cover him protectively, as thick as a blanket, and Ciro closes his eyes and struggles to breathe under the press of animal, rank and scrabbling and far too much.

“Your softness for him does you no favors, Nephele.”

“He’s mine!”

Victor snorts. “You’re going to learn some important things here today, my girl. Be mindful that you learn the right lesson.” A phone chimes, and Ciro cracks an eyelid open just in time to see his father smile. “Ah. Our guest of honor is here at last.”

No….

“Let’s find out just how much he values you after all, Ciro.”

 

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

 Notes: Nothing. Is. Ever. Easy. For. Kieron!

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

***

Chapter Fifteen, Part Two

 

Photo by Maximilian Jaenicke

Carlisle’s ship was heavy with fuel fumes. It was almost enough to make Kieron’s eyes water, and he was wondered for a moment how Carlisle had managed to spend a full hour in this thing without getting sick before he remembered her EV suit. “Is there another one of those?” he asked.

“No,” she said, taking the helmet off. She winced as she realized why he’d asked. “Shit. I didn’t know it was going to be that strong.” She reopened the back hatch of her ship, and the smell dissipated a bit. It was colder, but that was preferable to marinating in that stench. “I had to refill the tank from the inside of the ship,” she explained as they moved a bit closer to the door. They left the General where he was, still unconscious. “I couldn’t hook it up to the refilling station directly without someone noticing, so I used bottles from the reserve stores instead. It got a little messy.”

Clearly. Kieron bit back the urge to snap at her—what was done was done, and he was lucky she’d waited for him back there. “The skimmer is as good as dead,” he said instead.

“I figured. That’s why I led us in here.” For all the lines of strain in her face, Kieron could see she felt a little proud of herself. “This deep in the canyons, we’re untraceable. The rock has too many minerals in it that interfere with signals of all sorts. Even from above, unless it’s letting off nuclear levels of radiation, it’s not going to be visible.” She nodded at Blobby. “I assume that thing doesn’t really have a nuclear battery in it.”

“It doesn’t.” Kieron wasn’t exactly sure what Blobby ran on, but he was pretty sure of that much.

“Good.” She nodded. “Naturally the canyons are one of the first spots the others will look for us, and even without a functioning tracking device we don’t want to risk being spotted. As soon as the smell has cleared out a bit more, I’ll lift us out of here and we’ll head to a secondary location where we have a better chance of lasting until your other ship makes it down to pick us up.” She patted the ceiling above them. “This one’s good on planet, but it’s not space safe.”

“Ah.” Was now the right time to tell her that they didn’t actually have another ship in orbit? “What about the weather? I thought ships couldn’t get through these storms.”

“There’s a pattern to them that we ought to be able to take advantage of,” she replied, her lips twisting with a bitter smile. “I’d know. This is the third of these meta-seasons I’ve lived through, and I could have gotten a meteorology degree at any Alliance university after all the research I did on them. With a little bit of work, I’ll be able to tell when a lull is coming. You’ll send up your distress signal, and then it’ll be a race to see who gets to us first—your people or mine.”

“His,” Kieron clarified. Carlisle tilted her head in question. “His people, not yours. I think it’s safe to say that they’re not going to take you back at this point.”

Carlisle was silent for a moment. “True,” she said at last. “That’s…true.” She wouldn’t quite meet his eyes. “It’s for the best, though.”

He wasn’t sure she really believed that, but he’d take it. “All right. I guess we should—”

Blobby chirped. Kieron stared down at him. “What?” Blobby chirped more urgently, then rolled out of his arms and over to where they’d left the General sitting. He still appeared to be unconscious, and yet one of his arms was stretched out over the control panel. Before Kieron or Blobby could get to him, he jammed his finger down on one of the buttons.

There was a faint “clunk” beneath their feet, and then a new and differently foul scent began to waft through the air. “Did he just empty the sanitation system?” Kieron choked out.

Carlisle was way less sanguine, stalking over to her father in a second. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she shouted in his face. “You know what that’s going to do!”

“Oh, daughter,” the old man wheezed, opening his eyes to gaze at both of them. “I’m…counting on it.”

“What will it do?” Kieron asked. Neither of them answered him, too busy staring each other down to bother. “What will it do?” he repeated, more loudly.

“It’s a fucking target on our backs,” she said, finally looking over at him. “Fuck. We need to get out of here right now.”

“What’s going to target us based on the smell of our…” The answer came to him before he even finished the sentence. “Predators? Reptilians?”

“There’s more than those little lizards hunting people on my planet,” the General said proudly. “These canyons are the home of something far worse. These beasts need good, hard soil to make their tunnels, not the crumbling stuff out on the plains, not the solid rock where my station is built.” He managed to lift his head a bit. “They’re already on the way, no doubt.”

Kieron didn’t remember any animal larger than the reptilians from his childhood, but the look on Carlisle’s face indicated that she was taking this very seriously. “Go move the skimmer,” she snapped. “We need to back out of here right now.”

“Just go up and over,” Kieron said.

“It’s too narrow at the top of the canyon, just do what I say!”

Fucking…fine. He turned around to run back over to the skimmer and move it as far as its low battery would allow, but Kieron didn’t make it more than a few steps out the hatch when the emergency lights on the skimmer suddenly flared as the ground beneath it seemed to punch it. The skimmer flipped up and over, landing on its back. Kieron stared, transfixed, as out from the ground emerged something like…they could have been a dozen black, shining shovels criss-crossing each other like antique scissor blades, except they were far sharper than any shovel he’d ever seen. There was something hungry about the way they sought out the edges of the skimmer’s roof, then crunched down on it like it was no harder to break apart than the shell of a nut.

What…the hell…were those things?

“Kieron!”

“Coming!” He ran back into the ship and Carlisle shut the door behind him, then shoved the General’s chair into the hold, away from the controls.

“Are you insane?” she demanded. “If a borer takes out my ship, we’re all going to die! You won’t be spared!”

“I won’t be made into a bargaining chip with my own damn people,” he spat at her, sweat pouring down his forehead. For all that he looked ill, the General appeared satisfied. “If this is how I die, then at least I die a martyr for the glory of my cause and the—”

Kieron punched him. Hard. The old man’s head snapped back and he fell unconscious. A second later Kieron envied him, because the ship jolted so hard from a hit to the bottom of it that he flew up into the ceiling, barely saving himself from a concussion by blocking with his already damaged arm.

Ow, fuck!

“Hang on to something,” Carlisle yelled as she threw herself into the pilot’s seat. “This is going to get rough!”