Текст книги "Alien god"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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CHAPTER FIVE Torrance

Fuck. Fuck!

This couldn’t be real. And yet, it had to be. We’d gotten off way too easy on this alien planet so far. No alien hostiles, no weird viruses, no natural disasters the likes of which we’d never seen on Earth. Something had to give. Something had to eventually come and bite us in our arrogant, ignorant human asses.

And clearly, ass-biting time had come.

Gunfire cut through the air, the sound of it shocking me into movement. Just as something – a figure? – hauled itself fully out of the crack and dove through the sky, I spun and started running. As much as I could, anyway, with the snow clogging every step I took.

I didn’t get far. A catastrophic surge exploded through the ground, earthquake-like in its intensity. Like a goddamn meteor had just made contact. I couldn’t even cry out before I was flung forward, throttling through the air until I collided face-first with the ground. Thank God it’s winter. Without the deep, pillowy snow to cushion my landing, I definitely would have broken something. Probably my neck. As it was, I was mostly alright, aside from the fact that the wind had been knocked out of me. Having my face pressed into the snow didn’t help, and I fought to right myself. For one queasy heartbeat, I felt like I was in quicksand. Sinking and flailing.

I managed to get myself back to my feet. Disoriented, I looked all around, my head twisting this way and that. A cacophony of sound from the valley beyond the hill washed over me in violent and indecipherable waves. More gunfire? Explosions. And...

Engines revving up.

I didn’t have time to make sense of it all before I was forced into movement yet again. A riot of snow was pummeling down the hill towards me, a small avalanche spurred on by whatever force had thrown me down. My heart in my throat, I just barely managed to haul myself behind a tree when the snow hit, obliterating as a tsunami. I slammed my back against the tree, clutching at it through my gloves, as ferocious white sprayed in furious opaque sheets on either side. The tree trembled, and my eyes fell closed as I silently begged the huge crystal cone not to topple over onto me.

It felt like I was stuck there forever. Like the tidal wave of snow would never stop. Thankfully, it finally did slow, though. The snow on the hill hadn’t been terribly deep, but the hill was so huge, that it was still a massive volume coming at me. By the time I opened my eyes, the snow on either side of the tree had created drifts higher than my head. The avalanche had slowed but was still moving enough that I couldn’t safely leave.

But it turned out I couldn’t safely stay, either. The snow at the tops of the drifts on either side began to cave in, falling down around me. I blinked, and I was buried up to my waist.

Pure, animal fear gripped me.

I’m going to be buried alive.

I couldn’t even do anything to stop it. I tried to dig myself out, but more snow collapsed inward on me. Only a small crystal overhang on the tree above my head kept my upper body clear as everything fell inwards, walls of impenetrable white all around me. And still, the snow moved outside, adding to the walls, the weight, until I was completely encased.

Entombed.

Terror froze me more powerfully than the cold. I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe, and I doubted I’d even be able to do that for long, considering how fast the carbon dioxide would build up in my small bubble beneath the snow.

What do I do? Fuck! Think, Torrance!

What did I know about surviving an avalanche? Was I supposed to spit? I’d heard that, once. But then I remembered something about the spit helping you tell which way was up and which was down, which I already knew considering I was still standing upright. So that was fucking useless.

My hands were trapped against my sides, and I agonized over whether I should try to pull them free or not. Too much movement could make the snow above and ahead of me crash inwards into my bubble of air. But if I didn’t move, I’d die here.

I love you, Dad. But I’m not ready to join you just yet.

Slowly, carefully, I wiggled my fingers, trying to see what I was working with. Pain lanced up my injured wrist, but I ignored it. Man, I was stuck. Like, really, really stuck.

Panic threatened to overwhelm me. My heart beat so hard in my ears I barely caught the sound of voices. I held my breath, my eyes opening as wide as possible behind my goggles as if that would somehow help me hear better. I quickly decided that it wasn’t helping, and I closed them, focusing everything I had on the sound out beyond the snow.

Everything was muffled in here, but the voices were closer than the explosions and engine sounds beyond, and the people seemed to be shouting. I caught half-words and snippets screamed by a voice I knew well.

Min-Ji.

“Rance still ow air!”

Thank God. They must have been clear of the avalanche where they’d been working further along the hill. I should have stayed with them!

Then came another voice I knew. A voice I hated.

“I don’t... Life sigh!”

He doesn’t see my life sign.

Shit! Sometimes physical barriers could prevent a good reading on a life sign, especially when using the small, weaker scanners we took out into the field. The snow was hiding my life sign.

I fought to keep my dismay under control, listening harder. Major Corey was saying something else.

“Eez prolly ed! We’re ot! Tha shi... eve out us!”

That what? That shit? That shiv?

That ship?

Out us...

Without us.

They’re leaving.

Min-Ji screamed something else, or maybe it was Suvi this time, but I didn’t catch it. I was too busy taking the deepest fucking breath I’d ever taken in my life. If I could hear them from outside, if I yelled loud enough, maybe they’d hear me, too.

Just as I opened my mouth, another explosion rang out, terrific and terrible. It cut off my scream and made my snowy house of cards quiver alarmingly around my head. More explosions followed, and I lost track of how many there were or how many minutes ticked by. By the time the reverberations died down, there were no more voices outside. No more gunfire from what I could tell, either.

And the sound of engines...

Was quieter. Getting quieter every fucking second until I couldn’t hear anything outside at all.

I tried to lie to myself. Tried to tell myself that maybe it just sounded quieter because more snow had drifted around me. Or maybe because my own frantic heartbeat was drowning out everything else.

But I knew, deep in my snow-buried bones I knew, that they had left. Left the atmosphere.

Left me.

The ship was gone.

But what was even worse?

The thing that had hauled itself out of the sky, caused the explosions, and forced an entire military crew into retreat despite weapons and shields and machinery...

Was probably still fucking here.

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CHAPTER SIX Wylfrael

The sky door Maerwynne had opened for me from Heofonraed formed near my castle. Thankfully, Sionnach wasn’t located in the dark part of his star map, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to open the door here and I would have waited for some more of my strength to return. I owe him a great debt. I would pay it as soon as I was able. I did not like owing things to others.

I liked being weak even less.

But I was not too weak to confront and kill these ones. The ones in the valley. My valley.

I crashed to the ground, sending shockwaves through the snow. Calamity ensued at my arrival, and I felt a bitter stir of malevolent satisfaction at their fear. How dare these weak, wingless creatures think that they could come here and dig into my world like worms while I was gone?

They should have known that I’d be back.

My satisfaction turned to fury when some of the humans, the ones not running, aimed small machines at me. Weapons. A vicious spray of sound filled the valley, and rock-like projectiles pinged off of my hide. Stone of the sky. I was weaker than I’d realized. Some of the tiny things they sent my way actually penetrated, leaving bloodied marks along my chest and wings. One hit my cheek, skidding just under my eye and leaving an infuriating burn.

Enough.

I heaved up the last vestiges of strength I possessed, concentrating my energy on the snow. I roared as my star map glowed brighter and thrummed with power. I raised my hands and the snow rose with them, becoming a freezing spear that crashed over the group of humans aiming those tiny machines at me. Maerwynne was right. They are weak. Not a single human recovered from the blow.

I turned, fangs bared, from that group, my gaze slashing over the scene. Many of the humans were running into a large, disc-like thing. The contraption that had brought them here, no doubt. It was entirely different in design from a Tvarvatra machine, so at the very least I could surmise they were not allied with those foul beings. The disc machine whirred.

If I’d been stronger, I likely would have killed them all. Collapsed their machine into the snow with a single blow of my fist and forced them all to stand, fight, and die.

But as it was, my energy was too depleted. I wanted them gone, and they were going. Let them look upon me and run. Cowardly little creatures.

The ones who did not carry weapons were all stowed in the disc machine now. The only ones left upon the snow still aimed their tiny weapons my way, flinging their quick, biting stones at me. I stalked towards them, about a dozen of them in all, ignoring the scoring sensations across my skin. The sounds of their weapons gave way to shouts, bleated commands I could not understand. New weapons were engaged against me – ones that they threw from their hands, detonating all around me with fire and fury. For every explosion that went off, I ripped up a wall of snow and ice to protect myself. The snow melted and dispersed quickly under the fiery blows, but it kept me protected enough as I advanced on the remaining warriors. When I got close, they tried to turn and run into the machine, like the others had. I decided these ones would be worth spending some of my dwindling power on. With a stretch of my hand, pummelling snow heaved over them with the force of a mountain falling. I turned my attention to the disc machine to see three figures jumping inside – stragglers I had not noticed before. Two were smaller and weaponless. The taller one aimed his weapon at me as he entered the disc machine.

That enraged me. I was being stupid, now, to keep using my power when there was so little left. But my restraint had become even more eroded than my stores of strength. With a vicious snarl, I snapped open my wings, leaping forward and grasping the human’s neck in my hand. I pulled him from the disc machine as some of the humans screamed. A few of them continued fighting, showering me with little rocks that did not explode and lobbing the large rocks that did explode.

I flew into the air with the wriggling, struggling warrior, out of range of the others on the disc. Even now, he still tried to kill me, clutching at my throat, grabbing my hair.

“You’re a fool,” I hissed at the flat, dark sheen of his eye. “You do not know whose world you’re in now.”

Sounds – maybe words – came from his white and mouthless face. I understood none of them, and wanted to even less. The human unloaded his weapon on me at close range, and I grunted as the stones dug deep into my guts.

I snatched the thing from his hands and crunched it in my grip as if it were nothing more than a bit of wayward ice. I let the black pieces fall to the ground, far below us now. My grip on his neck tightened, and I dragged his hideous, mouthless face up to mine.

“I’ll tell you, then,” I rasped, blood coursing down my legs, my wings beating. “This is Sionnach.” The human squirmed and gasped, but I did not let go. “Sionnach is mine. Mine to guard, mine to protect. And because you’re in it, your life is mine, too.” I held him by his neck out in the air, further away from my body.

“But not for long,” I said grimly.

With that, I flung him down. Down, down, down. He did not move again.

After a moment, I followed him to the snow and landed, wanting to make sure no more warriors remained to threaten me with their impudence and ridiculous little weapons. I saw no others. The disc thing grew louder, then lifted off of the ground, the humans in retreat.

I stood motionless upon the snow of my mother’s homeland, watching as the invaders fled, leaving their dead behind. By tonight, even the corpses would be gone, dragged away by Sionnachan beasts grown bold with winter-sharpened hunger.

Before returning to my castle to see what had become of it, I took to the skies once more, flying over the nearby forest. I needed to see what damage they’d done, and to make entirely sure none of them remained in my woods. I bristled when I saw their tools upon the ground, alongside hunks of trees they’d carved, pieces of my world hacked away without permission or consideration.

At least they’re gone now.

It soothed me, just a little, my anger abating and giving way to exhaustion. I soared down, back to the ground, landing in very deep snow that looked churned and distorted. With a quick sweep of my eyes, I realized it had come from the hill in a small avalanche.

I grimaced, hoping none of the native Sionnachan beasts had been harmed by the deluge. Breathing out in a tight hiss, I began to walk, using small bursts of power to clear the overly deep snow from my path. I didn’t want to fly right now. Right now, I wanted to be in the world, among the trees.

I recognized these trees. Many of them, at least. But they were larger. Older. And there were new young ones I’d never seen. My fingers trailed over their frosted surfaces as I tried to reacquaint myself with the world I felt I’d only just left, but had really been away from for so long.

I paused a wingspan away from the base of one particular tree. It was a tree I knew well – one of the largest even when I’d been a boy. One of the rarer colours, it stood out among the others, shining an iridescent silver-white, the same colour as stone sky blood. When we were young gods, Skalla and I would race each other climbing it. I always won, and I’d half imagined it was because the tree loved me better. That it had helped me somehow.

“So old, and yet still here,” I murmured. Just like me. “I’m sorry I left you to stand guard on your own for so long.”

Thinking of Skalla scaling the tree turned sorrow into a knife inside me. Skalla, as steadfast a friend to me as this tree was. Skalla, beloved child of my father’s only brother. Skalla, who’d nearly killed me and had forced me to abandon Sionnach in the first place, leaving the world open new invaders.

My jaw tightened, and I began to turn away.

But not before something caught my eye. A movement at the base of the old silver tree.

A white hand pushing slowly out of the snow, then stopping.

My wings snapped open in anger. So, there was still one left here, after all. Guts churning with rage, fangs grinding, I collapsed the distance in brutal, driving strides. It seemed an offense beyond anything I could imagine that a human would be hiding and seeking protection from this tree of all trees. All the trees in this forest were mine. But this one felt like mine most of all.

The hand had not moved since working its fingers out of the snow. I knew little of human biology, but based on how the others had been so easily killed by my attacks, it seemed unlikely this one would last much longer.

“This is what happens when you force your way into a world you don’t belong to,” I growled at the limp hand. “Now, you pay the price.”

I decided to leave him there, freezing or suffocating or maybe both. I turned once again to go –

A vivid flash of sunlight reflected off the old silver tree, nearly blinding me and making me falter. My gaze narrowed, whipping back to the tree and the dying human buried at its base.

I hesitated, tail thwapping the snow in irritated motions. The sudden sense that I shouldn’t leave the human there solidified in my skull.

Fine. I’ll kill him myself, then.

With an impatient toss of my hand, my energy pulsed, splitting the snow to reveal a human standing. Or, he had been standing. The lack of snow to support him caused him to toppled forward.

Already dead, then.

But, no. My keen ears pricked, picking up the weak and laboured sound of breathing.

All my rage at the humans returned, blistering as if they were still here and fighting me. The ragged, scorching emotion was entirely focused on this one abandoned warrior. As if he alone was to blame for all of it. I grasped him by the front of his white hooded cloak and slammed his back against the tree. The pain of the motion seemed to shock him into consciousness, a low, cracking groan emanating from his unseen mouth. With my free hand, I held the human’s lolling head upright so I could look at his face.

Cursed stars, these humans were hideous. I’d been to many worlds and seen many beings, but I found the human visage particularly revolting. The broad, shiny black shell of a single eye stretched across the entire upper portion of his face, and he had no nose or mouth that I could see, just a disturbing stretch of white hide.

But...

I could hear that breath much more clearly now. Breath that was coming from where a mouth or nose could be reliably found on many species.

More clothing?

Frustrated by the riddle, I tore at the white, not caring if it really was skin and I was ripping half this creature’s face off. But it wasn’t skin. It was protecting skin instead. And the eye was not an eye, but yet more protective gear. I realized that when I saw the white edges around the black shell pressing harshly into pliable skin, as if it was not naturally meant to be there.

I ripped the black thing away as well.

And froze, harder and more motionless than the trees around me.

Being so repulsed by the human, I’d expected ugliness to continue after tearing away these outer layers. But what I found was something altogether... different.

The human’s face was small, delicate, smooth grey-ish white skin curved over shell-like bone. Her features were placed very similarly to my own, but were smaller. Softer. A slim little nose and a plush, blue-tinted mouth above a pointed chin. Her bluish lips parted as she took a strained breath, revealing two rows of white, blunt teeth. Curling eyelashes fluttered as she tried to focus her gaze – a gaze unlike any other I’d ever seen. White, with rich amber, brown, and black in the middle. Like Sionnachan honey drizzled over snow.

I realized I’d started thinking of the human as she and her instead of him. I’d encountered enough races across the cosmos to know that gender and biology could vary vastly. But she shared enough characteristics with species I knew well that made me think she was a female. And even without that experience, the analysis that consisted of holding her up against other women I’d met, I still would have figured it out. If I’d only encountered other stone sky gods and had never seen a female in my life, I would have known she was one. It was primal. Instinctive. A wordless recognition that flared in my belly and my brain, as vivid and inescapable as the blinding burst of the sun on this very tree just a moment before.

“Wake up, woman,” I hissed, holding her head firmly so that when her snow and honey eyes finally did open all the way she had nowhere to look but at me. “Wake up and tell me exactly what you think you’re doing in my world.”

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CHAPTER SEVEN Torrance

“Hello?”

I heard the word, and it took me a moment to realize I was the one who’d said it. It had come out as some kind of automatic response to my returning consciousness. Like I’d been lost in a dark room and had heard the sound of somebody moving nearby.

“Hello?” I said again, confusion muddling my mind. The last thing I remembered was...

The tree and the snow and the explosions and the engines and...

They’re gone.

Where everything had been hazy a moment before, it all became clear, crashing in on me and shattering in sharp fragments. The fighting, the avalanche. The alien figure who’d clawed his way out of a stony sky, defying everything I thought I knew about space and air and atoms.

My eyes wrenched open as adrenaline rattled my limbs. I shook violently, teeth chattering as my eyes focused on... On...?

Him.

Cold air clawed down my throat on my gasping inhale. A face, mere inches from my own, filled my vision, broad and alien and vicious. A gaze like electric blue fire seared me. Stunned, I looked down and away. I shuddered violently when I realized just how close this creature was. He was holding me up, one massive fist scrunched around the front of my parka, the other at the side of my hood, holding my head in place.

I stared mutely at the fist holding my parka, blinking over and over, trying to figure out if he really did have glowing stars webbed all over his hand and bare arm, or if that was just some trick of my oxygen-starved brain. That arm connected to a bulging, muscled shoulder, leading into a bare, mostly human-looking male torso. Except that it wasn’t human. Because the skin was a deep, stony bronze colour, shot through with glowing blue veins of starlight, glittering points of light clustered like constellations everywhere I looked.

And the size marked him as non-human, too. No human man I’d ever seen had shoulders that broad, muscles that tightly packed on a towering frame. The only reason his face had appeared level with mine when I’d opened my eyes was because he’d been forcing my head back with his hand while simultaneously bending down to me.

That hand tightened, as if responding to my thoughts. He wrenched my head back again, my neck craning, until our gazes met once more.

A small, wordless moan tore from my throat. Even though I’d made the sound, I couldn’t quite name the source of it. Fear, maybe. Pain.

Or shock at the obliterating, savage beauty of his eyes.

They weren’t just bright and blue, like I’d thought at first. They were mostly a deep and inescapable black. The blue light I’d noticed came from the iris or the pupil or... Whatever the fuck it was. His irises weren’t round like a human’s, but more like swirling columns running up and down each eye. Blazing blue fury in a black abyss, twisting like tornados made of azure flame. The blue of his gaze was so bright it sent a dusting of light over the rugged slashes of his cheekbones and turned his thick white eyelashes into the colour of a sky I’d once known. A sky somewhere very far from here...

He was saying something to me, I realized distantly. I licked my lips, my exhausted gaze dipping to a broad, angry mouth. Fangs flashed as he spoke, his voice like snow roaring down a mountain.

“I don’t know... I don’t know,” I croaked, not understanding anything he’d said. My head pounded, and I still hadn’t been entirely convinced that this wasn’t some hallucination of a dying brain. Maybe I really was still buried under all that snow...

But his hands on me felt so, so real.

But suddenly, those hands were gone. My knees buckled. Luckily, enough of my weight was pressed backwards against the tree behind me that I slid down its trunk rather than face-planting into the snow. I collapsed to the ground, eyes fluttering closed as weakness made me dizzy.

But I didn’t have time to be dizzy or weak. He’d let me go for some reason, and I wasn’t dead yet. I had to get up. I had to run. Even if I had nowhere to run to.

I cracked my eyes open, then I jolted.

An angel.

For the tiniest moment, in my dazed state, I flashed back to the snow angel I’d made somewhere in this forest, conflating the thing I’d made with the image in front of me. But the one before me now was different. Larger than my powdery snow angel could ever hope to be, with a leathery black wingspan that nearly blotted out the sky. Like the skin on his front, his wings glittered with glorious explosions of blue lights and lines, like an entire universe had been woven into his flesh.

A mane of thick, straight white hair spilled between the wings, ending just above the waistline of tight, black trousers. A long, bushy tail, like a fox’s, was a flash of russet colour contrasting among the white and black and blue. A shift in the light, or maybe a shift in the way the alien held his head, made me notice he had two reddish, fox-like ears, too, poking out from between thick white strands of hair at the top of his head.

Not an angel, I thought, gritting my teeth as I started to rise, panting, to my feet. Not an angel, but a fox-tailed, bat-winged demon. An alien monster I had to get away from at all costs.

Steadying myself against the tree, I raised my foot to take a step.

My boot never hit the ground.

He moved faster than should have been possible, especially for someone his size, all coiled strength and agile muscle. His hands closed around my waist, his wings slamming downward until the world, along with my voice, was ripped entirely away.

The ground was gone.

All that was left was the white and the black and the wings. Red fur, webbed stars.

And the swallowing blue of his eyes.

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