Page 73 of Caveman Alien's Heat
“Stop,” he says, low and insistent. “Don’t make me hurt you.”
“Let go of me!” I slam my head back. It cracks against his face hard enough to make him grunt. But he only snarls and tightens his grip, dragging me closer, locking my arms tighter behind me.
The swarm thickens overhead. The sound builds until it presses into my skull, a grinding, endless shriek.
Prak’ox shifts his stance, bracing, using his weight. I kick, scrape for footing, try to twist free, but the rock is slick with spray and steam and I can’t get leverage.
“Don’t fight,” he breathes against my ear. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
His hand moves again, forcing deeper, searching, taking what it wants while I strain uselessly against him.
“Ah,” Prak’ox says as his hand burrows into the hole he ripped in my dress and goes further down. “Here is something nice—” His head snaps around.
There’s an opening in the flood of bloodwings. And it’s shaped like a man. There’s fur, dark and torn, barely visible through the thick layer of flesh-eating alien locusts. Loose leather pieces are flapping in the wind. And there’s blood. Lots of it.
The figure staggers forward into the calm air on the lee side of the screen, bent into the wind even here, as if it still presses against him. Small, dark bodies cling to him, dozens of them. Their thin wings are folded in, mandibles working, tearing at furand leather, at anything they can reach, frantically chirping all the while.
His hand comes up and rips one free, flinging it aside. Another replaces it at once.
He lifts his head.
“Nator’ax!” I exclaim, horrified at the sight of him, with blood dripping down the chewed-up fur, completely covered in bloodwings.
He sees me too, and the fury in his blue eyes makes me blanch. Someone’s going to die here.
Prak’ox throws me off him and reaches for his spear. “Outtriber!”
Nator’ax crosses the space in two strides and seizes him by the back of the neck and shoulder, hauling him away from me with a force that rips him completely off balance. Prak’ox crashes sideways into the rocks, scrambling, trying to recover.
Nator’ax doesn’t give him the chance, but Prak’ox doesn’t go easily. He slams his elbow back into Nator’ax’s ribs and twists, clawing for the ground, for the screen, for anything he can grab. Nator’ax grunts with the impacts, his footing slipping on the wet rock for a heartbeat as the bloodwings strike him in a frenzy, clinging and tearing.
For a moment it looks like they might both go down, dragged into the swarm together. Then something in Nator’ax snaps tight. With a furious roar and a savage heave, he wrenches Prak’ox upward again, ignoring the creatures chewing into his neck and arms, and forces him higher into the churning streamof millions of ravenous alien locusts while dark blood runs down him.
Prak’ox screams and kicks and punches, but Nator’ax stays there, frozen like a statue despite the hits he absorbs.
Prak’ox has no fur on, and after a couple of seconds his head is covered in bloodwings. The screams get louder, then suddenly muffled as one of them flies into his mouth.
Nator’ax throws the sexual predator into the deadly stream, behind the rock screen.
For a moment I just stand there.
The swarm roars overhead, a solid, living current. Something thrashes beyond the stones, a shape swallowed almost at once, and then there’s nothing but the sound again—endless, grinding, deafening, lethal.
My breath comes in short, broken pulls. I can’t seem to fill my lungs.
Nator’ax is still there, motionless, his hands and arms black with clinging bloodwings. They crawl over him, biting, tearing, their wings flickering in frantic bursts. He doesn’t react, just looks at them as if mystified.
“Nator’ax!” My voice comes out thin, lost under the noise. That jolts me loose. I stagger to my feet and rush to him, my hands shaking as I grab at his furs, yanking them loose where they’re already torn. “Get into the water! Quick!”
He looks at me, and his eyes are blank, as if he’s still somewhere else, still inside the storm. His chest rises and falls too slowly, as though he’s forgotten how to breathe properly, and for a moment I’m not sure he even sees me. The blood on his skindoesn’t seem to register with him at all, nor do the creatures still clinging and biting, wings flapping. He just stands there, unmoving, like something pulled out of the blizzard and not fully returned.
For a second I’m afraid he won’t move. Then he gives a small, almost careless shrug and lets the heavy fur fall from his shoulders. It hits the rock with a wet, heavy splat.
More bloodwings cling to his skin, and I slap at them, ripping them free, feeling them tear away with a sickening resistance.
“Move!” I shout, grabbing one of his hands with both of mine, dragging him with me and ignoring the creepy feel of the locusts.
Without another word, he steps into the pool. He drops beneath the surface, vanishing in a single motion, curling in on himself as the water closes over him.
