Chronicles of Kin Roland 1: Enemy of Man by Scott E Moon Read Free Book Online Page B

time.
    This planet was in the future, but he was here. Past. Present. Future. All the same.
    But where do these memories co me from? Why won’t they change?
    He hadn’t dared follow the humans into space, not immediately. But he was here. He was on the Long Hunt. It was dangerous to leave the home world, because his kind were misunderstood and hated. Humans hated Droon’s kindred because they hunted. This made no sense. Did humans not eat? Were they kept alive by magic? For a moment, he felt as though he had never left, but he had, and the confusion angered and frustrated him.
    Droon slapped his hands against his face repeatedly and closed his eyes. The home world was ruined. His kind forced to migrate. He wanted to hunt with them in the ten-thousand-warrior pack on the far side of this world, but he must finish the Long Hunt. He must prove himself.
    Droon bit the palms of his hands, then smeared blood over his face. Red, then purple, then black, the blood dried and felt good. His skin tingled with new life. Blinking the crust from his eyes, he set his sights on the ocean in the distance. Alien ships—human ships—rested on the sand by the big water where humans lived in buildings made of wood and brick and pieces of ships.
    He climbed to the top of the mountain and stared across the valleys. A maze of little worlds spread below where creatures lived without knowing Droon was coming to eat them. He would warn them in their nightmares, terrorize them, and then devour them.
    M oons marched across the sky. An angry tube of bright colors stared at him from high above. He didn’t like it. He looked at the machines on the beach and the men in their skin that was not skin, but armor.
    Droon snarled. Eating a man in armor was a cruel joke. They screamed, but he couldn’t pull out all the flesh and bone, which left him hungry.
    He once stood on a rock spire of his home world, looking for his kindred, watching the fires that melted stone. Wind and smoke had burned his face and damaged his proud spots. His eyes had been dark orange, almost red, but now they were yellow. He felt sickness in his body. He howled his loneliness at the strange sky and studied this alien world, waiting for his kindred to appear. He understood he was not the only one who came to this world with the strange moons and orange snake in the sky, but they were hunting in the ten-thousand-warrior pack. They weren’t on the Long Hunt.
    There were three kinds of kindred now. Those who migrated and merely hunted for food and pleasure with their families in the pack, those who were enslaved by the humans—who were not the humans who destroyed his home world—and tho se who hunted for the last man.
    The Long Hunt.
    Others stole ships and followed the wrong trail. They were lost. Droon was in the right place. He had slaughtered dozens of people who had known Kin-rol-an-da. Their dream memories always pointed to wormholes, and all wormholes led here.
    Droon didn’t understand the humans who enslaved thousands of his people after the fires drove them into migration, but he understood the humans w ho came with Kin-rol-an-da. Earth Fleet came to kill, but not to eat. The others had come only to take his people away. They looked like the Kin-rol-an-da’s kindred, but used different words and captured creatures to fight for them.
    The strangers didn’t matter. They didn’t set the fires that melted the surface of the home world. The only human that mattered was the one who had been last. The only man who mattered was Kin-rol-an-da. When he was taken, the Long Hunt would be over and Droon would be first of his kindred.
    Droon squatted and tried to sleep. Doubts plagued him. He couldn’t visualize tearing Kin-rol-an-da apart as he could other creatures. The idea of doubt was strange, as was the feeling of fear. He wanted the Long Hunt to end, not for the satisfaction of feeding on an enemy, but because he was unaccustomed to fear and desired relief.

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