Bondmate by J.J. Lore Read Free Book Online Page B

her, and she
wondered where she could hide. Before she could decide which
direction to flee, several men fell in front of her, their bodies splashing in
the mud as they twitched, huge bleeding holes in their backs. She looked
up to find a true devil staring at
her, green skin, scaly mouth open in a sick grin. It
was over two meters tall, clad in shiny silvery leggings, its broad chest
decorated with faceted studs burrowed into the skin. She recognized it as one
of the creatures in Mateen and Bynton’s images, only
this one was horribly alive.
    Avanelle
couldn’t breathe, sure she’d be cut in half by the
huge curved sword the thing had raised. Instead it hissed at her and threw its
hand in the air, a gobbet of some sort of ink smacking into her chest. It
gestured for her to move aside, towards a huddle of women and children. She
did, stumbling over one of the now still men. The green demon nodded once and
then whipped its head in another direction, quickly firing a bolt of energy
from the end of the blade and cutting down more running men.
    Hide . Hiding was the
only option. She crouched and ran as fast as her cold and cramped legs could
take her, skirting the cluster of weeping women and children, toward the edge
of the camp where the garbage had begun to pile up as soon as everyone had
arrived. There would surely be a shelter there.
    ****
    Mateen
smelled battle before the hover’s sensors alerted them to weapons fire at the
camp as they approached. They’d been following Avanelle’s trail as rapidly as
they could before the rain washed away all heat traces of her footfalls, but
the distant cracking sound of laser bolts was unmistakable. Bynton, who’d been
rigid with tension the whole journey, jolted as he, too, recognized the echo.
    “Who
would be attacking the camp?”
    Mateen
adjusted the scanner’s range, and his blood heated when he read the results. “ Xyran phase signatures. Must be raiders, the treaty holds
them at bay.”
    “Unless
war has broken out while we were distracted yesterday.” Bynton growled as he
unsheathed his lash and brought the hover cannon to bear on the settlement as
it hove into view.
    Faint
pulses of laser light sparked from the huddled buildings, and he fancied he
could hear the screams of the dying. Avanelle was there.
She’d fled them only to find no sanctuary but a worse threat than any she could
have imagined from them.
    Mateen
glanced over the readings. There were so many humans milling about that the
readings for them were indistinct, but the Xyran raiders were easily found. Seven, with two waiting at the
nearby ship. Heat signatures showed many cooling bodies, and for a
despairing moment, Mateen wondered if one of the pale silhouettes of the dead
was Avanelle’s. No. She was alive. He
knew it. She was a desirable young female, worth too much to Xyran slavers to kill.
    “We’ll
find her and bring her home, Mat.” Bynton’s reassurance was appreciated, and Mat gave him a quick nod as he maneuvered the
hover in a wide loop to come up behind the Xyran ship
at a fast and low trajectory. The bandits were apparently too overconfident to
bother setting any sort of security perimeter, because he was able to come
within four hundred meters undetected. Bynton’s accuracy of fire was impeccable as usual. With a minimum of energy dispersal,
the Xyran ship was disabled and both pilots were
dismembered, their skin color shifting as their brains died.
    Mateen
didn’t linger to take a blood trophy or pull the gems from their skin. Instead
he hopped the hover over the wall of the camp and set it down as close to the
main raiding party as possible. Taken completely unaware, two Xyrans were shredded by Bynton’s cannon fire, but too many humans crowded the scene for more firing.
    Hand-to-hand
combat pleased Mateen . It sharpened his focus and
allowed a productive outlet for his turbulent emotions. First they had to
eliminate the threat, and then they could systematically search the