Wall-crawlers were essentially harmless if there was only one of them—but there was never just one. And if a pilot allowed an infestation of the little bastards to overtake his ship, they would bite through wiring and happily make a meal of the ship’s engine. Which meant that if you saw one, you had to drop everything and hunt it down right away before things got worse.
The thing that made wall-crawlers so hard to kill was the thin layer of oily slime that covered their flat, hard-as-nails outer shell. The slime could withstand the intense cold of space and the fiery heat of re-entry—you couldn’t kill them by freezing them, burning them, or stepping on them while they were still encased in slime. In fact, about the only thing that worked was to melt their slime layer with the salt spray Stone was currently holding. Once de-slimed, they were vulnerable to the elements and could be killed.
“Where are you, you bastard?” he muttered, looking behind the seats and then checking the food-prep area. “You’re not getting away from me! I’ll hunt you down and—”
And then the panic alarm went off on his communicator. Cassandra was in trouble!
Shoving the sodium spray into his back pocket, Stone drew his blaster and ran for the door of the shuttle. If that bastard The Beast had so much as laid a single finger on her, Stone was going to break it off.
Break it off and feed it to him.
“Hold on, Cassandra,” he muttered under his breath. “I’m coming, sweetheart!”
Fifty-Three
She wasn’t outside the ship or in the entrance to the palace, which was surprisingly unguarded. It wasn’t until Stone saw that the huge, heavy gold disk doors of the throne room were open that he knew where his partner must be.
He was about to charge in, blaster drawn, when he felt the cold muzzle of a weapon against the back of his neck.
“Be careful with him,” the burbling voice of Xempi Gozeriam called. “We want him alive—for now.”
“I’ve got him, your Slimefullness—don’t you worry,” The Beast said from behind Stone. He added, speaking to Stone himself, “Don’t try anything funny, Kindred. We’ve got your partner in the fucking-frame and you’ll play along if you want her to live at least a little while longer. Now hand me the blaster.”
“Where is she?” Stone’s voice was hoarse in his own ears as he fought the Rage that tried to overcome him. He was no use to Cassandra as a mindless beast—he had to retain his reason!
“Like I said, strapped to the fucking-frame, up on the stage. Come on, give me the blaster and we’ll go see her together.”
Stone didn’t see that he had any choice. Slowly, he handed his blaster over to the Beast who tucked it into his own belt.
“Good. Now come on—straight to the stage,” he told Stone, giving him a shove.
When he got closer to the stage, Stone saw what was going on. Cassandra had been fastened to some kind of silver hoop, her arms and legs splayed out helplessly. Her dress had been ripped open to show her bare breasts and there were tear tracks on her cheeks, as though she’d been crying. Her panties, at least, appeared to be intact—it was easy to see since her legs were spread. She appeared to be seated on some kind of thin metal frame seat, which kept her from sagging in her bindings.
Stone abruptly found his Rage a little bit easier to control. If The Beast had hurt her—raped her—he would have lost control completely. But it appeared that no permanent damage had been done, which made the possessive, protective berserker part of himself less likely to break free and create havoc—or get them both killed.
“Mistress,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice level. “Are you well?”
“You can drop the act, Kindred,” The Beast snarled in his ear. “We know the two of you are spies from the Mother Ship. We’ve known it from the minute you touched down on the planet.”
Stone felt his heart settle like a rock at the bottom of a pond. So they knew. Their cover, as the humans said, was blown. Still, there might be a way to get out of this—he just needed to keep his wits about him and find a way to get Cassandra free of that strange silver hoop The Beast had called the “fucking-frame.”
“There is no need for violence,” he said, speaking to Gozeriam and ignoring The Beast. “We didn’t come here to harm you, your Slimefullness—we are here to apprehend The Beast for a murder he committed on a planet called Earth.”
Gozeriam uttered a muddy laugh.
“Is that right?”
“Yes.” Stone nodded, feeling the cold muzzle of the weapon brush against his neck again. “Let us take him and we’ll be gone. Name your price and we can pay it.”