Hounded on Predator Planet, page 32
“No, I will always prefer Diablo over you as a friend,” I whispered. Then I touched my lips to his, just a gentle peck. “Because I will always prefer you over Diablo as a heart mate.”
I felt Natheka’s warm breath kiss my lips, and we stayed like that, breathing each other’s air, unsung music mingling among the gas molecules and the radio waves between us.
A shout brought me up short, and Natheka grabbed me and crouched, a sword in his hand before I could blink.
“A devil dog!” Pattee called again. I spun to see her suited up with her javelin poised above her shoulder, and I untangled myself from Natheka’s arms, spinning to find Pattee’s target.
A lone white devil dog stood at the perimeter of the woodland where it tapered off into a ridgeline directly west.
“Do not throw,” Hivelt said in a low voice coming up behind us. “I have seen this devil dog before.”
“Are you sure?” Pattee asked.
“Yes,” I said, my voice a squeak. “Dios mio, es mi perrito! Diablo!” I jumped out from Natheka’s arm, barely registering his bark of a laugh.
I ran toward the devil dog, arms open wide, and Diablo took a step forward. Before I lunged to hug him, I remembered where I was and what he was and skidded a foot short. Panting, I knelt in front of him and held my hand out.
Diablo sniffed it, his eyes never straying from mine. When he had sniffed every particle of skin, he gifted me with a gentle swipe of his tongue, and then tossed his head. He trotted past me and padded around the hunters, pausing to sniff at Natheka’s boots. He circled the tree Raxthezana had been leaning against and lifted his leg to pee on it. Then he pranced to the tech-slave and stared Naraxthel down as he urinated on the robot’s feet.
The others stared with open mouths as he trotted between them and then returned to the ridgeline. He stood proud, a stiff wind blowing his tail and the setting suns casting him in silhouette. Then he loped out of sight.
“What in the ever-living shale just happened?” Esra said, having emerged from the cave entrance only moments before.
“A pazathel-nax invaded our camp and pissed all over it,” Raxthezana said.
“Amity’s friend paid her a visit,” Natheka said. “And he will return.” Natheka held his hand out to me, and I took it, my heart overflowing with happiness.
“Natheka,” Hivelt said, walking up to him. He patted Natheka’s shoulder. “The mutt is your friend, as well,” he said. “I will tell you about it—tomorrow,” he said, looking at me with a wink. “Pattee,” he said as he turned to her. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah, let’s go,” she said with an exaggerated stretch and fake yawn. “I am bushed. Esra, you tired?”
“Oh, um, yeah,” she said. “Totally wiped out. Come on, Red.” She dragged Naraxthel who scowled at the poop smear left by Raxthezana’s boot print when he stalked into the cave.
They re-entered the cave where we planned to bed down for the night.
Natheka’s laugh rumbled and sent chills throughout my body.
“Your fellow humans are weak,” he said. “They need extra rest before we trek to the Agothe-Fazetha on the morrow.”
“And I don’t?” I said, reaching my hands out to him.
“Nay,” he said, taking them and pulling me into his chest. “You are the strongest of them. Of this, I have no doubt.”
Laughing, I looked up into his stunning face.
“I don’t know about that,” I said. “But I do know that I would fight anything or anyone to keep you.”
“This I know,” he said. “But Goddesses willing, you need never do that again, for you have me.”
He tilted his head and pressed his lips against mine, catching my gasp in his mouth like a net. But then, he was a hunter.
I clung to him and kissed him back, touching my lips to his in a pattern of growing intensity, fanning flames of desire that promised a joyful conflagration. When his mouth opened in a slight part, I captured his lower lip between my teeth and bit down, the softest, kindest bite any predator could inflict on another. But then again, I was a hunter, too. Mas o menos. If those mysterious dreams were any indication, then Predator Planet needed my kind of hunter as much as it needed women like Pattee and Esra. The kind of hunter that finds the wounded and incomplete, the underdog, and nurses them back to health, making them whole. Y yo tambien. And me too.
Epilogue
Raxkarax
Gusts of breath blew past my lips as I strained at the edge of the fault. Miles had I trekked with little to no violence. Perhaps the animals had migrated to the moraine; maybe the wandering rogues found elsewhere to hunt. But the absence of combat doubled my anxiety; I had no outlet, and fear scraped my insides like claws on slate rock.
My heart cramped in cycles. There was no question in my mind or body that I must seek this human pod in the bowel of the Agothe-Fatheza, but one question stood alone at the horizon of my thoughts. How would I reach her?
Dirt rained over my helmet, and I dug my claws deeper into the edge, recalling events of the last half-zatik. While I had puzzled over traversing the poisonous swamp that was the abomination of Ikthe, the ground began to shake. The quake’s violence grew so sharp that I could not keep my balance.
With rending noises racing toward me, I had gripped the ground, watching in terror as a great crack fissured its way along an invisible path until it ripped away from before me. If it gaped wider, my journey to the Agothe-Fatheza would be hindered, delayed, or even ruined.
Even as the ground trembled, I strove to stand, stumbling and holding my arms wide for balance. I ran toward the heave of land and jumped, grasping the ledge and kicking my boot spikes into the soil and rock, sticking to the wall jutting up from the ground like a tree lizard.
I hung on, waiting for the rocking to subside, the rolling heaves reminding me of a ship at sea, and my stomach threatened to heave as well.
The violence of the quaking ebbed, and I took the chance to climb, hugging the ledge and pushing myself higher until I straddled it, and then swung my other leg up. I rolled away from the edge, panting and gasping, and waited for more calamity to befall me.
When the shaking stopped, I sat up and looked out over the ledge. I widened my eyes and couldn’t help the gaping of my mouth when I observed the giant chasm that stretched for hundreds of veltiks in either direction. I rose to standing and peered down into the crevasse. It plunged into darkness.
The land I now stood on was permanently separated from the Bladed Forest, the great wilderness that spread to the south of the Plain of Ancient Ice.
Facing south, I marched to my new destiny. If I was to hike into the Agothe-Fatheza, I needed supplies only Ikthe could provide. My pack was laden with food stores gifted me by the others; two water pouches dangled from my belt, and a bone knife graced my side; it was a gift from Pattee. Esra had given me a small black rock, suggesting I might find a use for it because it was magnetic. Now I hunted for the dirt-tongue. Puddle birds. An acid-spitter and a spiny warted rock-climber if I could find one.
I entered the Bristled Barrens with caution. The Barrens boasted the remains of what was once a vast wilderness of hardwood trees. An ancient cataclysm had rendered a once-lush wood into a waste of split trunks, all stabbing at the sky like accusing black fingers. Everywhere one looked stood darkened trees stripped of leaves and branches. The ground, brittle and cracked, hoarded its sparse growth of dry grasses or the occasional briar patch.
One would think such a place free of dangerous animals; it appeared there was nowhere to hide, no burrows to retreat into, no sheltering treefalls. But the Barrens protected the one resource it abounded in. Tree Thieves.
Switching my helmet to thermal imaging would give me a slight advantage when I came upon these predators and activating my camouflage might spare me a jotik’s moment of surprise. With the mighty divide cutting off any other routes, I had no choice but to face this forbidding land and its inhabitants.
For ten veltiks, the trunks bordering the Barrens jutted in sparse clumps, but the deeper one walked into the wood, the closer together they became. Though I walked with careful step, it still seemed my every movement sent an echoing blast of sound through the trees. If my pack brushed against the crumbling black bark, if my boot dislodged a pebble or my sword trailed past a spindly branch, the noises reverberated across the compacted ground.
Nerves fraying with every step, I longed to hear the comforting voices of my companions. Hivelt with his bravado and daring heart mate, she of the solemn face but ready service. Naraxthel’s stories and little Esra showing delight at rocks so common as to be invisible. I missed Raxthezana with his grousing about the non-existent goddesses. For one who didn’t believe in them, he invoked their names as often as the rest of us, if not more. I wondered if Natheka had yet rescued his human and what she would be like.
Shaking my head, I trudged on, ears tuned to the stealthiest sound. I might be a lumbering fool in this region bristling with dead trees, but even the great Tree Thief must press its weight into the dirt or squeeze between the unforgiving tree trunks. Its presence would be made known soon enough.
Grim reality pressed me to turn my back on my brethren, my past, and my old trail. Before me lay the path to a perilous future, but if I lived, it would be a future with a heart mate at my side.
Playlist
Kill Beautiful Things, DED
Lifeline, Bad Wolves
Hunger Strike, Temple of the Dog
Hunter’s Moon, Ghost
Supercharged, Ayron Jones
My Name is Human, Highly Suspect
Halo 4 Main Menu soundtrack
Oblivion Movie Soundtrack
Space Lord, Monster Magnet
Welcome to the Jungle, Guns N Roses
Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
Monster, EXO
Acknowledgments
Cousin James Mueller for consultation about EOD.
Allison Pratt for the comparison of the jokapazathel to a parakeet/potato hybrid.
Buffyanna for believing in me long before I knew I could write at length in this genre.
Sherry Falzone for hours of consulting and insight.
SFR Authors Chat for preserving Diablo’s life.
Lori Swenson and Kim Knobloch for unbridled support and encouragement.
Donna Keusch for encouragement and intelligent questions.
Donna MacKnight for gentle cattle prods for me to keep going.
Victoria Clapton for treasured cheerleading, expressions of hope, and all-around best friendedness.
Elizabeth Amhearst for the fastest and best beta read in the West, as well as vital suggestions re: electrolytes.
My daughter-in-law for correct usage of Spanish and Mexican idioms.
Monserrat Corvus for her thorough read-through, sensitivity catches and correct usage of Spanish, as well as more common Mexican superlatives.
Paul Hale for insightful and thorough alpha reading.
My fans who waited patiently and impatiently for this book. I’m sorry I was no match for the pandemic, but I think I’m finally getting a handle on both my ADHD and my writing career. Let’s see if I can get Books 4 and 5 out sooner rather than later!
More Book Links
Pay a visit to my website for excerpts, news, and random tidbits: www.loveivickyholt.com
Subscribers to my newsletter receive a free copy of "Stranded on Mining Planet", a 46k word novella that reads like a full-length book. It takes place in the IGMC/Predator Planet Universe, but not the actual Predator Planet. https://BookHip.com/HVNPFJT
Did you miss any of the books? Links below:
https://books2read.com/u/bzBLqEHunted on Predator Planet Book 1
https://books2read.com/u/3LxG8eTracked on Predator Planet Book 2
https://books2read.com/u/mg7Az0Hounded on Predator Planet Book 3
https://books2read.com/u/m0qXKMTrapped on Predator Planet Book 4
https://books2read.com/u/mYDRpxHidden in Predator Planet Book 5
If you love the crash landing/hunted in the jungle trope, you'll probably love "The Krinar Savage" by my pen name, Chris Roxboro.
https://books2read.com/u/3RLgqY
And if you love the Krinar world created by the talented Anna Zaires, (whose permission I received before writing in the Krinar world), you may enjoy The Krinar Rake by Chris Roxboro. (Be warned, this book takes place in Chicago in relative contemporary circumstances so is nothing like the Predator Planet books.)
https://books2read.com/u/med9eV
Vicky L. Holt, Hounded on Predator Planet
