Mikko (Stolen Warriors #2) - Ella Maven Page 0,3

inside. Buy some time…

Something slimy closed around my ankle, and I yelped as I stumbled. Slashing with my blade, I connected with a body. The hand released, but it was soon replaced by a whip-like appendage, which I soon discovered was a tail.

I hacked at it with the sharp blade, but the creature’s skin was too tough. The blade bounced off ineffectually. I fell to my knees as the tail yanked. The blade fell from my hands. I lunged for it, but it was gone—fallen off the platform into the abyss of writhing bodies.

“No!” I choked out as the tail yanked again. A terrible victory cry went up from the crowd. My hands sought purchase on the rugged stone surface of the platform, but it was no use. Whoever had me was too strong, and I knew this was it—Rian Perez was about to meet her end at the hands, claws, and tails of some alien creatures in a prison pit. What a fitting ending. If only my sad sack of a mother could see me now.

She’d blow a puff of smoke in my face and say, “You deserve this.”

A shout went up from somewhere in the back of the crowd, followed by a scream of agony. Were they fighting to get to me? More shouts followed, and the tail holding me yanked viscously. I tumbled off the platform and crashed into the body of a horned creature with half his face missing. Bloodied skin dripped off the exposed bone of his jaw. Rotten meat surrounded me, and my stomach heaved. His eyes glowed a sick yellow as he clicked his fangs at me. He gurgled something behind a mangled throat.

And that was all I could take. I pushed at him with all my strength and screamed my lungs out.

He only gurgled more in what sounded like an evil laugh. His hands closed around my neck, cutting off my air.

I wheezed as his face drew nearer and he unfurled a wet tongue which bubbled and oozed like a science experiment.

Tears ran down my face as I braced for the pain, as I wished for this to all end fast. Was he going to play with me? God no. Just kill me now. Please.

That tongue stretched an inch from my face, and just as I felt his hot breath on my cheek, a large black spike slammed into the side of his head. Right in his temple.

The alien’s eyes went wide, his body swayed while his face drained of color, and then he collapsed. I went down with him, gasping for air when his hands finally released my neck. I scrambled away from him but didn’t get far as claws raked my hair, tails wrapped around my thighs and an arm banded around my chest.

And now… Well, now I was just fucking pissed. Reaching down, I yanked the spike out of the alien’s head and whirled to face my attackers. I fought with everything I had—kicking and punching at the aliens around me. I was outnumbered, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t give in.

A gray alien tore through my shirt with his claw and immediately three black spikes, just like the one I held in my hand, plunged into his chest. He fell back, stunned, and glanced up. “The Drix,” he hissed before falling onto his back, blood oozing from his mouth.

Suddenly the bodies around me began to fall away as a shower of black spikes rained down upon us. Well… not me. Everywhere but me, as if I had some sort of invisible shield around me. I heard a distinctive noise now—a grunting and growling as a shadow fell over me.

I lifted my head to find a blue alien soaring toward me on a swinging rope. I didn’t have a second to run as his strong arm wrapped around my waist and hauled me into the air.

We swung over the crowd at a dizzying speed just before sailing up past the first and second floor of cells to land on the very edge of the third-floor cell walkway.

My feet didn’t even touch the ground as he leapt from the rope and took off in a sprint down the walkway. I struggled in his grip, because I didn’t even want to think about what one of these things would do to me if they got me alone. I would have been better off dying in that pit. But his grip was iron-clad, and there was no way I was getting away