THE RED WAKE

Chapter 35

      "Stop it you...animal!" Jenny cried. "You're hurting him!" 

      She looked plaintively at Iris then. Her eyes pleading with the younger woman for...for what she did not know. The pale woman arched an eyebrow, her smile growing crueler, colder by the second. 

     "Why have I hurt your friends?" she laughed, a grisly tinkling that danced upon the night air. "I hurt them because it pleases me to do so," she said. The twin seemed to measure Iris where she stood. Her eyes crinkled, as if confused by what she was seeing. Then she took a step forward. "You are spirited," she said. "Or possibly insane. In either case, I suspect you shall provide some sport for my colleagues in the Blood Games of the Torn su Shad, the great arena of my people. Many of your kind have already proven... quite entertaining. Since our arrival, the fortunes of Severine the Hunter have been greatly increased. Your world is ripe and filled with bounty."

      Severine's eyes glinted with malicious glee as a new idea suddenly occurred to her. "You may even fetch me a measure of favor with the Breed Masters." With a contemptuous toss of her yellow/black hair, Severine gestured toward the Jhun standing behind her. "Take her, and the male," Severine said. "You may kill the old woman." 

      Jimmy screamed his outrage and terror. "Don't you touch her!" he raged. 

      He fought then, ignoring the ripping pain in his leg, finally crying out as the ape-thing reached down and pulled him to his feet. It held him with one clawed hand while it switched its' grip on the long spear to the other. At the same time a second creature drew a weapon of its' own and moved toward Jenny. The Brood Dam snarled and moved toward Iris as the Jhun nearest Jenny lifted its spear, cocked its arm to hurl death at the old woman where she lay defenseless on the ground. Then the night exploded as a shot rang out in the yard. Iris and Severine both turned toward them in time to see Jenny's attacker fall backward, its' left eye spurting gore as the creature crashed to the earth. Jimmy Montague held his old service revolver extended before him. With a lightning movement, Jimmy twisted out of the alien's grasp, turned and stuck the .45 under the ape- thing's hairy chin and pulled the trigger. The blast blew the top of the ape thing's skull into the open doorway of the old barn twenty feet away. Jimmy grasped Jenny to him and pulled her along behind him as the other invaders moved in toward them. 

     The Brood Dam barely even registered what was happening on the other side of the yard. It had taken a step toward Iris as Severine moved out of its way. The Hunter stood in the shadows, content to allow the white giantess to carry out her orders. Iris saw the creatures surround Jimmy and Jenny, saw another go down as Jimmy's next shot found a vulnerable target. Then Jenny shrieked as Jimmy was struck down from behind by a lashing, whip-like weapon and dragged backward into the shadows of the barn. 

      Iris saw it all from where she stood on the porch, even as the Brood Dam reached for her. In the thunderous chaos of the violence, Iris stood fixed. The giantess, Jimmy and Jenny's peril as the creatures descended upon them like a plague of locusts... she stood at the center of it all, passive, observant. Then the Jhun giantess touched her. In that searing moment of contact, thoughts and images flooded Iris' awareness. The Brood Dam's powerful, blood- thick emotions, brutal and savage, threatened to sweep her out of herself. The Brood Dam's mind was being torn apart by...

      Afraid

     ...fear of the terrible god-thing that stood in the shadows behind the Jhun. Hate. ...for Iris: but most of all for the god-thing that she resembled. The shape shifting god-demon that commanded her children, made them less than they were, and... Flesh, torn and red. Screams... To chase and kill the moon eyes. To battle, to rend and burn... blood- thirst, thick and hot....a terrible craving for the tender flesh of the creatures she and her kind had encountered here on this new Reave planet. These soft slow prey- creatures who were to become slaves, even as she was a slave, as her entire race had been enslaved by the moon eyes. All this and more was communicated in the instant the Brood Dam touched Iris. And the boundless rage of the Jhun giantess evoked a deep response within Iris' own telepathic mind. That rage ignited a firestorm; A fury of power which burst from deep within Iris' body as the Jhun wrapped a massive clawed hand around her forearm. With a snarl of surprise, the Brood Dam stepped back from Iris as if she had been burned.