Talina watched Kylee climb up on Flute’s back. The sight never ceased to amaze her. As if the camouflage-mottled quetzal was a pet horse instead of an alpha predator.
“You be damned careful,” Talina warned again. “Aguila sounds like she’s on the edge of a breakdown. No telling about the marine she’s with. They could shoot at anything that moves.”
“What about Mom and Dad?”
“Nothing new there, kid. Kalico says whatever this thing is, it speared them and hauled them up into the trees. That’s all I’ve got so far. Pay attention! First priority: Find Kalico. She’ll tell you more.”
“Someone’s going to pay for this,” Kylee vowed, tapping Flute and saying, “Let’s go.”
With Dek beside her, Talina watched Flute stretch out; the blonde kid on the beast’s back bent low as the quetzal leaped to the next batch of roots and disappeared on the other side.
“Dek, you stay close now. We can’t afford a mistake.” Talina shifted her rifle, staring up at the darkening branches overhead.
“I don’t get it,” Dek said as he followed behind her. “Hauled them up into the trees? What can do that?”
“Nightmare hunts that way.” Talina experienced that familiar crawling in her gut, and for once it wasn’t Demon. “Maybe that’s what this is.”
But as she glanced up, it was to wonder what kind of nightmare could reach that far, lift that much weight that fast. Mostly they suspended their prey like dangling fruit as the tentacles wound down and into their victim’s guts. It took days.
Spearing the victim’s body? Jerking it up? It just didn’t sound right.
Or it’s something we haven’t seen.
And worse, it had taken two of the most important people on Donovan. Dya Simonov had revolutionized their understanding of Donovanian genetics, was in the process of developing local plants that humans could actually digest in case anything happened to the terrestrial species upon which survival depended.
And if Talbot was dead, too? Another talented second in command at Port Authority security? A friend? Just gone like that? Poof? Hauled up into the high branches to be eaten?
“You look grim,” Taglioni noted as he panted along behind her.
“Just thinking what it means to lose Mark and Dya. On the com Kalico said this thing speared them through the chest. Yanked them up into the branches. Said it took just a couple of seconds.”
Taglioni shot a furtive look up at the darkening branches overhead. “That’s what? Forty, fifty meters up? That’s a lot of muscle to haul a body up that high.”
“Now you’re getting the idea.” Talina shook her head as she climbed over a bundle of interlocked roots, reached back, and helped the struggling Taglioni as he clambered awkwardly over the mess.
“You know, it’s starting to get dark.” Stress thinned Taglioni’s voice. “We going to be able to track down Kylee and the Supervisor in the dark?”
She tapped the side of her head. “Part of the curse of being infected is that I can see in the dark. We’re fine. At least I am. You? If you can’t see where you’re putting your feet? If you blunder into a chokeya vine? Guess you’ll be the main course for some lucky critter out here.”
“And to think, I used to worry about being eaten on Ashanti. That was my night terror. That the Unreconciled would get loose in the night. Come slipping up from Deck Three. Sneak into my room, and I’d be helpless as they started carving on me.” He chuckled hollowly, eyes on his feet as he tried to match her steps. “Why does it always come down to being eaten?”
“Stop. Take my hand. We’re climbing this knot of roots. There’s a tooth flower off to the side. I need you to follow my lead. Don’t do anything dumb.”
“You got it.”
“Give me your rifle.” She took it, slung it next to hers. “Okay, let’s go.”
She eased Dek over the tangle, ensuring he didn’t accidently close the distance with the tooth flower. Damn, the thing was bigger than the ones she’d seen previously. And it was aware, watching them where it hung down from a thick vine that spanned the space between two aquajades.
On the other side, she took a quick look around. Noted a sidewinder that was easing out from a dark hole. The thing had probably hidden as Flute passed this way. The roots were still squirming but starting to relax after the quetzal’s passage.
“How much farther do you think?” Dek asked.
She gave him a sidelong glance. Dark as it was getting, the guy probably figured she couldn’t see the outright fear in his face.
In the branches high overhead, something uttered a whistling, almost hypersonic scream. Taglioni jumped half out of his skin.
“Don’t know, Dek. Guess you’ll just have to trust me.”
She saw the flicker of amusement behind his fear as he said, “Oh . . . sure.” A beat. “Gave myself up for dead back when the ping pong tree crushed the airtruck.”