Mated to the Warg (Wargs of the Outland, #1)

The Underworld

Even with the noise, she still heard it. An insidious clicking sound. It was coming from the tunnel, getting louder. She froze. All except her gaze which skittered to the tunnel. She held her breath to keep it rasping out.

She saw its eyes well before she saw the hulking silhouette in the tunnel, her vision waterlogged. Unblinking, glinting black eyes. Horror spewed like hot venom in her gut. The thing scuttled closer. Then it halted abruptly and raised its empty gaze up to where she was hanging like a piece of meat.

She wanted to scream, but her lungs were seized. She'd never seen a vishwa before—she didn't count that brief glance she'd caught the night she'd escaped. This thing was terrifying.

It stood straighter, the better to see her, its head jerking curiously to the side. It was taller than a warg, far taller even than Thrax. But whereas the wargs were all brute brawn and towering sinew, this thing was insect-thin. Hairless. The eyes were large, gleaming obsidian orbs. Emotionless. Like a skull with spiders creeping in the sockets. It made her skin crawl.

Its thorax was long and narrow with slits along the ribs almost like gills. Its white, scaly skin seemed hard as bone. The lower half of its body was...grotesque. Human, and undeniably male, except that from the waist down the body seemed back to front! The two fat nodes at its groin looked more like buttocks, and the cock dangling from its backend was a hideous, ball-less thing. Her eyes bulged to see a piece of stringy white goop dribbling from the slit.

Though the body was largely alien, the creature's white face looked almost human. Except for its mouth. The jowls were strangely furrowed with folds of excess skin. But it wasn't the furrows that disturbed her. It was the awful pincer-like fangs protruding from the corners of its mouth, clicking together. A fiendish click-click-clicking, like it was smacking its lips as it watched her.

She screamed as it rushed forward suddenly, climbing spider-fast up the wall with sharp fingers. With one quick swipe of its razor claws, the silk was sliced free. Still screaming, she hurtled to the ground, her legs glued in web.

Stars exploded in her vision as she hit the ground, and it took precious seconds to gather her wits. Before she knew it, the vishwa snatched up the severed silk rope and began dragging her along, feet first, as though she was nothing but a snared rabbit.

Though she kicked and screamed, it made no difference. Her fingers snagged a root and she held on with all her warg strength, but it was futile. Her fingernails ripped as she was yanked away. The vishwa was stronger. Much too strong.

If she wasn't terrified before, she was now. That terror slipped its clammy black claws around her guts and twisted them tight. Through the clamor of terror and thundering water, she watched her drag marks sweep over those of the other three that'd come before.

Her throat was so raw, her screams were becoming dry coughs. It took her a few seconds to realize the vishwa had stilled. The next instant, the sound of a roar blared through the chamber. Not the roaring of water but a warg!

She snapped her head around. The vishwa dropped the tether and spun around to face the newcomer.

Thresh was kneeling in the whirling water, having landed on his feet. But it was a Thresh she'd never seen before! He was crouching on two feet, muscles rippling for attack. His face seemed frozen in half-shift. Neither wolf, neither man.

He snatched up one of the forsaken broadswords at his feet, the metal ringing against the rock. It earned a vicious clicking from the vishwa. As he approached them, leading with his pitted sword, he bared his long fangs, his pointy ears flat against his skull. The mane of grey fur around his head and neck was bristling, his arms bulging, claws black and lethal on the hilt. He'd never looked so threatening. Now he was as terrifying as the vishwa. She hadn't known that wargs could half-shift like this.