“Fuck this,” she hissed and darted forward to grab whatever she could. If this came down to a free-for-all, she needed every advantage she could get.
Her movement sparked a stampede, but she managed to get out of the fray with a staff with blades on either end and a heavy dagger. Handing the latter off to Melissa, she warned. “Stay behind me.”
Most of the aliens hadn’t gone for the weapons and within seconds it became obvious why. They didn’t need them. With a high-pitched yodel, the butterfly launched himself at the biggest of the lizards, wrapping the beautiful cerulean wings around the huge-scaled form. The humans all watched in horror as the lizard screamed, the wings shaking as they made a sound like a buzzsaw. The lizard's legs jerked, and blood splattered the sands below. When the butterfly released its wings, a shredded skeleton dropped to the ground, razor-like teeth visible on the inside of the wings for a second before they folded back down.
“Holy shit,” Melissa whimpered, her eyes latched on the bloody wings.
Nat latched her free hand around the woman’s arm. “Come on,” she hissed. “We need to get out of here! Now!”
She pushed more than dragged Melissa away from the crowd as the aliens and humans met in a clash of bodies and screams. She wasn’t daft. Some of those aliens were huge and wings with teeth? Yeah, that one was going to haunt her dreams for months… if she was alive by the end of the day.
“Where are we going?” Melissa cast a terrified glance over her shoulder as they ran. The rest of the human women did the same while the men stayed to fight. “There’s no way out.”
“No,” Nat agreed, eyes narrowing as she found what she was looking for. “But if we can’t escape, we need to even the odds. Get in here.”
5
Nat shoved the other woman between two of the pillars set at intervals along the stone walls. In pairs, a deep gap was set between them, just wide enough for the two of them to squeeze into but not wide enough for anyone to get in after them. Anyone trying to get to them had to come at them from the front only, which meant she only had one direction to defend.
“Kill anyone who gets past me,” she ordered over her shoulder as she took position in the "entrance," the staff held lightly in her hands.
“If… if anyone gets past you?” Melissa whimpered.
“I’ll be dead,” Nat snapped. “And you’ll need to get with the fucking program and make sure it doesn’t happen to you. Okay?”
She didn’t get chance to listen to Melissa’s reply if she made one because one of the aliens stepped in front of the gap between the two pillars.
Tall and human-like, his eyes were odd, and he had strange ridges up the backs of his arms. They weren’t what bothered her, though, but the bloodied claws at the ends of his fingers and toes.
“Evak nor tella bis sovat,” he leered, the language strange and harsh. She didn’t need a translator to know it was something disgusting, though, not with the way he looked them over.
“Fuck off!” she hissed, jabbing at him with the spear.
The strike was swift and decisive, and then she pulled back before he could grab her weapon and take it off her. She might have fought in the cages hand to hand, but that didn’t mean she’d never trained with bladed weapons. Nor was her time in the cages her first experience with a life of violence. The skin of her cheek was unmarked, but she might as well wear a ganger’s sign. She’d almost signed up with a gang as a teen before she’d realized that kind of life might kill her quicker than her father finding her.
He grinned, a new respect in his eyes as he looked at her and said something else incomprehensible. Then he was gone. From the screams, she figured he’d gone to find an easier target.
Not letting her guard down, she tested the spear with a few passes. It was light and well balanced, if a little unwieldy in such a small space. Keeping an eye out, she slid her hands along the shaft, trying to figure out if she could break it in two, but it seemed solid. Perhaps she could lean it against the wall and break it with a kick?
In the end she didn’t have to. Halfway down the shaft was a button. Pressing it, the spear broke in two and she grinned, hefting and spinning the two parts in her hands. Much better.
Movement in front of her made her snap her attention up. A lizard man stood there, smaller than the one the butterfly had torn up but still much bigger than she was. One of his arms looked weird, twisted and pulled up against his body, like it was deformed or had been injured at some point.
Melissa whimpered, curled up at the back of their little hidey-hole, arms around her knees.
“We’re gonna die.”
“No, we are not!” Nat said firmly, glaring at tall, red and scaled. She spun her sticks over her hands. “Come on then, handsome. Let’s see what you got.”
He roared, revealing more teeth than a T-Rex, and charged. She barely had time to get her sticks in front of her, slashing at the air between the two pillars. The razor-sharp edge of the blade took two of his fingers off and he screamed in rage and pain.
Then the fight was on in earnest. He couldn’t get close to her with the pillars on either side, just able to slash at her with his remaining claws and try and run at her with a charge. But the sharp bite of her blades made him think twice, and he backed off each time, watching her with dead yellow eyes.
“Come on, you fucker,” she murmured, looking for an opening each time he came near. She wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t an animal, and she knew he was analyzing the way she moved exactly the way she was studying him. He was looking for a weakness or an opening. She needed to kill him before he figured it out.
Other aliens ran past behind him and she taunted. “Why don’t you go join your little friends? Find some easier prey… cause this bitch bites!” She bared her teeth at him, snapping them together.
It was the wrong thing to do. His eyes turned black and he roared again.
“Oh fuck,” she hissed as he charged, and she found herself in a fight for her life. He barreled into the small gap, trying to throw her to the ground with his bulk. She swung, the blade lodging in the muscle at the side of his neck. It bit deep, black alien blood spraying everywhere, but didn’t cut through.
She ducked as his claws lashed through the air where her head had been a second ago and slammed a fist into the side of his body, right under the curled limb. He screamed and snapped at her with those vicious teeth. She was already gone, launching herself at the opposite wall and spinning in an adapted version of her favorite cage move. Instead of snapping her foot out, she twisted and slammed her second blade into his neck, driving it into the wound the first one had made. The extra momentum drove it deeper and his howls of rage became screams of pain.
She blocked it out, a snarl of fury on her face as she yanked her spear free and slammed it down again and again. Each time she was splattered with more black blood and her opponent slid closer to the ground until, finally, his eyes closed. He slumped against the side of the pillar. She stood over him for a moment, chest heaving and heart thundering in her ears. Then she recovered her second blade and kicked his body out to sprawl onto the sands in a warning to anyone else who thought she was an easy target.
She stood for long moments, her chest heaving. Somewhere behind her Melissa was muttering, "Ohmygod," over and over, but she couldn’t concentrate on that. She needed to be ready for the next asshole that tried for them. Her hands tightened on the handles of her weapons, slick with black blood.