I didn’t understand. Why scream? The creatures were beautiful, their civilization obviously advanced. They’d offered no threat, and yet she screamed, refusing the jelonar’s touch. Her terror elicited the same puzzled response in her companions.

  Some glanced at me. Some stared at the socialite as she backed away from the dais and its occupants as fast as she could scramble. Some kept filming. Others stood, adoration on their faces. Even the reptiles seemed puzzled by her reaction, exchanging uncertain glances as she continued to shriek.

  Whatever revelation she’d had, I did not see it, but I did hear Gerhard cursing under his breath, his words containing a sibilance I did not associate with humans.

  Another of the reptiles caught the gaze of an older man, and extended its hand, palm up, claws gleaming in the light. The man smiled at it, and took an uncertain step forward.

  Again, I raised my hand in protest, and again he caught the movement and looked toward me—and then he stopped moving, and his face changed from awe to fear. He clutched the old woman beside him and began to drag her away.

  He did not back pedal. He did not scream, and he did not run. He took his wife’s hand, and he towed her away from the creature that had called him, away from the light and wonder. And when he was far enough away, he tucked her under his arm and kept moving, out of The Ballroom toward the entrance of the dig.

  Others followed. Every single one of those who had looked in my direction and then looked directly back at the handsome reptiles, fled. Some grabbed whoever was standing closest, and some just took themselves. Gerhard unlooped my arm from his shoulders, pushing me away so that I stumbled, barely able to keep my feet.

  I caught myself on the wall, and froze, unable to move for a long moment as my world shuddered and dipped from darkness to light. The pain in my head spread across my skull like a too-tight hat, and my hair felt as if it didn’t belong in my scalp. My skin burned. In the background I heard Gerhard babbling.

  “My lords, I’m sorry. I don’t know what is happening.”

  I turned my head as my vision cleared, and watched as one of the reptiloids seized the nearest human by the shoulders, and pulled them into a one-armed embrace. I saw its other arm pull back and drive forward, heard a wet squelch as claws met and tore through flesh, heard the muffled cry as its victim began to smoke.

  “I don’t understand how they knew,” Gerhard said, his words racing over each other in an attempt at exoneration. “What do you want me to do?”

  One of the creatures replied with a series of gutturals, each syllable slamming itself into the matrix in my skull, each word untangling in a jangle of electrical spikes that made the meaning painfully clear.

  If I stayed in this chamber, if Gerhard, or the cats—those spectacular cats—or any one of the shifting creatures caught me, I was worse than dead, for the reptiloid who had hugged one of my fellow tourists close to its heart had dragged its victim back into the light, and the light had shifted around it.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Its head spikes disappeared in a thatch of thick, blonde hair. Its muzzle vanished, as did its tail, and when it stepped clear of the light, once more, it looked as human as you or I. It said something to Gerhard, and then glanced from the exit the tourists had taken, to the exit where I stood leaning against the wall. Dipping its head in a display of deference, it spoke to the leader, leaving Gerhard speechless.

  I did not wait to hear the response. I pushed off the wall and ran, and while I ran, I wept. I wept for my sister, for the four hapless tourists who had stood enthralled by the show, not letting me, or anything else distract them, and I wept for myself. And while I ran, I tried to open a link to Miss Delight.

  To my surprise, she answered.

  “Turn right,” she ordered. “No! Your other right.”

  Damn. Now what was I going to do?

  “Fine, fine. Okay stop. What the hell have you got in your system?” Before I could answer, she had riffled through my recent memories, and found the point Gerhard had darted me. “Well, that’s a problem.”

  You’re telling me, I wanted to say, but I was feeling sicker now. Neither drug was wearing off, and I was having trouble coordinating my legs.

  “You might as well stop running,” she said. “It’s right behind you.”

  “But, I don’t want to… I…”

  “Sshh. You’re away from the light, now. This far out, I think it can only kill you.”

  “But…”

  “Don’t be such a baby. I found out what happened to your sister.”

  “What?” It was all the question I had time for, as razor-sharp claws dug into my shoulder and wrenched me around.

  “You!” I could understand the creature, now, still thought it beautiful.

  “Me, what?” I asked.

  “You broke the ceremony.”

  “I…”

  It lowered its muzzle to within inches of my face, curled its lip back, and inhaled.

  “You even smell like her.”

  “Her?”

  “The other who escaped.”

  “She did?”

  “You will not be so lucky.”

  “How did she escape?”

  “You will step into the light with me.”

  “No—” but whatever else I wanted to say was lost in the sudden burning pain as it drove its hand into my belly, and opened its claws. I wanted to say more, tell it to stop, to plead with it to stop, but I couldn’t find the breath. I wanted to tell it that I thought it needed the light, and then I realized it was already dragging me back toward The Ballroom with its refracting crystals.

  “I thought you said it was too far away?” I whispered to Miss Delight. “I thought you said…” but as I tried to say it again, the light grew brighter, and I sensed the corridor open into that magnificent chamber.

  My mind didn’t want to know what was happening, and it couldn’t block what my body was saying, so it shut down, and I don’t know what happened next…except that we didn’t make it to the light, because I woke up in a regen tank, with Miss Delight sitting on the other side, and grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

  “I saved you again,” she said, looking far too pleased with herself. “And I found your sister.”

  The joy would have to wait, because I wanted to know what had happened. I needed to know I hadn’t become one of the creatures standing in the light. I had to fill in the darkness that was all I could recall between leaving the tunnel and waking up in the tank—again. The darkness, and the burning pain…

  “What happened?” I asked, and her face grew carefully blank. “I’m not playing, Em. What happened?”

  And I wouldn’t ever have known, if I hadn’t been able to blackmail her with what I knew of the Corovan Incident, because Odyssey had made her promise she’d keep what happened on Jehornak quiet. So she did. She kept her voice to the barest whisper, once the jammer was set, and told me how she’d shot the creature in the head as it got almost all the way back to the platform, and the light.

  It was the first time she’d ever admitted making a mistake.

  “I nearly wasn’t quick enough,” she said. “Those things are deceptively fast.” She caught the frown on my face, and tutted. “Now, don’t look at me like that; I did find your sister.”