Chapter 4
Iwas in a corral, that was the only way to describe it. Inside were what seemed like hundreds of beautiful women around me, in various states of dress or undress as it may be. A girl next to me was wearing what looked like an outfit from Xena, Warrior Princess, that TV show that had been popular when I was young.
The ground was covered in a thick lush green grass, and there was a metal fence around the outside of us. A faint buzzing filled the air, and I suspected that the fence was electric. The women were trying to stay as far from it as possible.
I let out a small shriek when a creature passed outside the fence in front of me. It looked similar to the monster that we’d encountered and killed during the trials. Like that one, it was standing on two feet, the color of its skin a muddy green. It looked over at me, and its piercing yellow eyes had my heart beating faster. It opened its mouth and smiled at me, if you could call it a smile with its sharp teeth that looked to be leaking a fluorescent green saliva. Where in the world had I found myself now?
The leather bikini girl, as I'd been calling her in my head, put her hand gently on my shoulder.
"Are you all right?" she asked. I could tell she was a Vepar because of her vibrant, almost glowing, blue eyes. That and the horn that was extending out of the middle of her forehead. It didn't take away from the fact that she was beyond attractive though.
"What is this place?" I asked, choking in the delirious screams that were threatening to erupt out of me as another creature walked by outside the enclosure.
It seemed like they were acting as guards of some sort. Looking beyond them, I could make out brown domes dotting the landscape around the corral. They were similar to the Vepar structures, just a little rougher looking as if there hadn't been as much time or technology put into creating them.
"You don't recognize this place?" she said with a broken laugh.
I shook my head. "Those are Khonsu though, I recognize them at least,” I said, taking a deep breath to try and relax. I obviously wasn't going anywhere at the moment.
"This is their capital city," she explained, brushing off a piece of dirt on her arm.
Corran, Derrial, Thane. I suddenly thought, everything coming back to me.
Constantly being knocked out couldn’t be good for my brain, it was clear that I was beginning to forget things. If this kept happening there was going to be permanent damage.
Fear and regret darted through me. The doctor had said that Corran was in that grey ship. What had happened to him? Where were the others?
I began to look around for them frantically, just on the off chance they were here somehow. The female Vepar put another comforting hand on my shoulder. "You need to calm down. You’ll only attract their attention by acting like this. I'm pretty sure they can sense fear and they feed off of it,” she said.
I glanced over at her. She appeared perfectly calm. As if she wasn't in the camp of the Vepar’s worst enemy, or at least what I thought was the Vepar’s worst enemy. I still knew next to nothing about these people.
"How are you not freaking out right now?" I asked as my body began to tremble. "And what are we doing here? Why are we in a corral?" As I was talking, my gaze continued to scan the landscape for my men. I had been suspicious of them since the beginning. I thought we had finally gotten to a good place. I should be more trusting than this. There was no way they had been working with Dr. Cryon. Right?
"You're the human, aren't you?" she asked understandingly.
I nodded hesitantly.
"I thought that you were just hiding your Vepar features so as not to attract attention. But this is how you look, isn't it?" she asked, eyeing me head to toe.
"Yep, no horns for me," I said jokingly, not even sure how I was able to joke right now about anything.
"You would look good with horns," she said with a serious tone. That hysterical edge of laughter threatened to erupt again, and I had to use all my effort to tamp it down.
"So, you know what we're doing here?" I asked, redirecting her to the issue at hand.
Her face sobered. "I've only been told about it, but I believe that we’re here for the Tangazi, or Mating hunt in your language," she said softly.
The word "hunt" made my blood freeze. I knew all about being hunted by the Khonsu. First by the one who had come after me on earth, and second by the monster in the woods.
"Can the Khonsu take different forms?" I asked, realizing that no one had explained this to me.
"They have many different forms. What you see walking around this area is their real form. It's my understanding that they can look however they want, although I haven't seen that myself."
I nodded, that explained a lot. I had to admit that I much preferred their other forms to the monsters currently patrolling the area. I shivered, thinking of how that first Khonsu had tortured me, flaying off pieces of my skin while I shrieked in agony. Maybe I did prefer this form actually, at least it didn't look like they had whips on their person, if it were even capable of carrying whips in its clawed hands.
"What does this mating hunt consist of?"
She threw me a look of sympathy.