style="font-size:15px;"> Lakesh started to lower back down, in the hope that they hadn’t, but the two beasts exploded from a standstill, legs pumping as they rushed to fall upon the former Cerberus redoubt leader.
Chapter 3
There had been two of them, stuck halfway between the snake-faced drones that served the Annunaki overlords and the odd, bigheaded spindles they had grown from. Domi made enough noise to alert the pair, and she continued to stomp until they had nearly gotten into sight. With deft quickness, the feral girl nestled herself in the shell of what used to be an automobile, shadows covering her like a blanket.
These freaks reminded Domi of Quavell in her final, suffering moments, a tormented beast tearing itself out of what used to be a gentle, delicate friend. She remembered the exponentially increasing strength that the hybrid woman had applied to her hand as she held it, lending emotional support to her. She remembered the final promise that she’d made, to protect her baby, the fragile little life for which she fought biology and alien technology to free from the prison of her body before it transformed into a sexless drone.
There was a brief jolt of pain, as Domi recalled when Balam had taken the child, disappearing so that neither the Annunaki nor the Cerberus rebels could claim control of the ninth overlord, which was what the infant had become. Domi had hoped that in the days since the apparent death of the orbiting dragon ship Tiamat, they would have the chance to locate Quavell’s child. Things never went according to plan. One menace had faded from the center stage, and dozens more popped up. Domi had done her best to bury those feelings, but the monsters who reacted to her baiting were just too similar to her dead friend to pass from her thoughts quickly.
“Waiting for more,” Domi whispered to herself, seeking an excuse to deflect her recriminations. So far, despite the long moments she waited, there were no more of the odd, alien hunters stalking in the open. Satisfied that she wasn’t going to be blindsided, she drew her wicked combat knife from its sheath. Just because only two had come to the sound of her footsteps didn’t mean others would ignore the discharge of a firearm.
The two of them would die quietly, and then Lakesh could be taken to shelter in the half-collapsed building they had emerged from. With nearly boneless ease, she slithered out of the derelict car’s window, crawling onto the sand, ruby eyes locked on the monstrosities even through her protective goggles. The rearmost creature would be her first target, and she already envisioned herself clamping a hand over its slit mouth, keeping it quiet as the saw-backed blade tore through the blend of scales and hybrid skin.
The hunters suddenly turned, and Domi’s plans disappeared. They’d spotted something, and out of the corner of her eye she recognized the steel-gray shock of Lakesh’s hair. He’d pulled his hood and cap off to maintain a lower profile as he spied upon the mutated hybrids, and he’d pushed his luck too far. They noticed him, and the swiftness of their response changed the albino’s plans in the blink of an eye.
Domi burst to her feet, tossing the knife from her right hand to her left so that she could reach her Detonics Combat Master. The need for silence had disappeared with the luxury of the hunters’ ignorance of their surroundings, and she brought up the locked and cocked little pistol, thumb snapping down its safety. Her arm was an ivory rod, corded muscles spearing the gun ahead of her as her legs shoved against the sand beneath her. She waited until the thumbnail of a front sight was almost swept toward the head of one of the two half-breeds before she applied force to the trigger. With a thunderous crash, the .45 spit out its deadly message. Her aim was off—she had meant to core the skull of her first target, but the fat bullet merely ripped a crease in the side of the beast’s head, missing a dead-on hit to bone and causing the slug to only split skin with a glancing impact.
The blast had done its job in protecting Lakesh, however, despite her miss. The two creatures skidded to a halt. The one that was clipped curled into a ball and rolled toward the cover of a chunk of masonry. The other spun on its heel, letting loose a strange keening wail as it wound back and sent its improvised pipe-ax whirling toward Domi. The albino girl jerked her head out of the path of the cartwheeling scythe. Its crudely sharpened tip ripped a long furrow through the side of her hood, cloth flapping away from the side of her face.
Had it not been for her catlike reflexes, Domi knew that she’d have suffered at least a shattered cheekbone, and perhaps worse given the strength of the hunter’s throw. She adjusted her aim, only a few degrees of movement as she continued her charge to meet the enemy, and pulled the trigger again. At this range, there was no finesse with the shot. She was going for center of mass, the mutant’s broad chest making a relatively easy target to hit. With a squeeze, she pumped the second round in her Detonics, and the half-breed stopped in his tracks, eyes flinching and squeezed shut in pain.
Domi had no illusions about the debate about the stopping power of handgun bullets. The end of a fight was the end of a fight, and she wasn’t about to turn her attention from an opponent until it was down and not struggling to kill her. With a kick, she launched herself through the air, whipping her knife around in a savage arc. The monstrous mutant lifted one of its brawny arms, blocking the swing of her knife, keeping its razor edge from its throat.
One shot to the chest, and the thing still had the speed to block her neck slice, but luckily, Domi intended to bring down the six-foot reptilian with more than just a bullet and a blade. Even with the knife blocked, she slammed both of her knees into its chest, bowling it backward with her weight and momentum. She knew that she wasn’t big enough to win a fight with the half-breed with just her brawn and muscle, but her deadliness came from far more than even the remarkable strength of her steel-cable muscles.
The creature let out a roar as it fell, and its chest seemed to sag a little under one knee as they sailed toward the ground. She’d managed to nail the ribs that her .45 bullet had gone through, and with her mass focused behind the joint, she’d caused the mutant even more damage. Broken ribs parted as they both hit the ground, shards of bone making its chest sag as she landed on top. The teardrop-eyed predator’s face was a mask of pain and fury, and though one arm wasn’t working thanks to skeletal trauma, it whipped its fist toward her face.
Domi’s sun goggles went flying as she barely had a chance to roll with the punch, cheek and forehead grated by scaly knuckles that left her porcelain skin red and raw. The bright sun intruded, searing her eyes and distracting her for a moment. That gave the enemy a chance to shove her off and roll away from her. Domi tumbled and got her legs beneath her, springing to her feet in an instant. The half-breed was on its knees, one gnarl-fingered hand pulling a second of the bent pipe-axes from its belt, ready to continue this battle on more even footing.
Domi snapped the .45 up and fired again, this time her aim striking dead center, her bullet tearing through the left side of its chest. She was going where she assumed the heart was, and from her battles with the Nephilim, she knew that they had the same vitals in the same spots as most other humanoids. Whatever she hit, the bullet’s impact jerked it back and into the ground, weapon tumbling from nerveless fingers. She lunged forward, stooping to make sure the thing was dead with her knife.
Domi didn’t want to waste any more bullets, in case the second hunter was still in the mood to battle or her gunfire attracted more unwanted visitors. Even as the mutant’s lips peeled back in a snarl, talon-tipped fingers rising to grab her throat, the albino girl speared her knife through one of its black, teardrop-shaped eyes, plunging six inches of steel into its brain.
One down, and the other had disappeared from sight, which meant some of these creatures had a glass jaw, or the wounded hunter had enough brains to launch an attack from stealth. Domi wasn’t going to wait around passively to determine what was going on. She locked her attention on the direction she’d last seen her opponent disappear to, and stepped back toward Lakesh.
“Domi!”
