Hostile Genus: An Epic Military Sci-Fi Series (Invasive Species Book 2) Ben Stevens (best contemporary novels txt) 📖

for fight or flight, and a cold sweat broke out across his dusty skin. He spun the hammer back into its smackdown position.

From beyond the pitch-black veil obscuring the room beyond the door, Jon could hear a dragging slipper-on-pavement sound—the slithering sound of the hundred mouths with their flashing needles. Somebody was awake, hungry, and very pissed off.

Lucy tore into the crowd like a half-dozen tornadoes touching down in the Shanty. Limbs and bits, human and vampire alike, sailed through the plaza like comets, streaming tails of blood and viscera in their wake. Being a cyborg, she had the advantage over normal humans of never tiring, of having machine precision in all her moves. Although it was the only part of her that was still human, even her brain had been enhanced with inorganic circuitry, allowing her to block fear and pain, control and regulate her body’s peptides and hormones and, as in the case of the present moment, multitask in a way that only a computer could, executing four different killing blows, to different targets, simultaneously, while perfectly timing a side-step so minuscule as to escape death by a fraction of an inch without flinching.

With all the steadfastness of the ocean’s incoming tide, wave after wave of attackers poured into the plaza to break over Lucy’s blades and gun. Despite her best efforts, however, for every four that she killed, at least one would indeed slip by to threaten Maya and Ratt. Part of her was aware of this, yet she was unable to do anything about it. It wasn’t that she preferred to fight the ones that she was fighting; it was that she was overwhelmed by them and any hesitation or alteration in her dance of death would result in her being wounded first, then slowed down, then killed. And dead guardians meant a dead goddess. Even though she was spinning, ducking, and lunging like an entire troupe of acrobats rolled into one, she had spotted, locked on to, and was tracking the location of one Sofia Fernando, and inch by bloody inch, she was getting closer to her. Knowing that she had waded too far out into this hostile sea to turn around and stand by her lady, Lucy and her war-clubs were now banking on the hope that if Sofia were to fall, the New Puebla counterattack would rout.

Sofia stood at the edge of the bloodbath, continuing to bark orders, rally her human sympathizers and otherwise organize the counterattack, which, despite the massive losses at the hands of Lucy and Carbine, was slowly turning the tide. Nearly all of the deadly floodlights had been shot out, and close to two dozen vampires were now at the stage, clawing at a glowing bubble that seemed to be protecting the traitorous Lily Sapphire.

First I need to get through this ninja bitch, then I will have you, you little skank.

Sofia relished the thought of killing Lily slowly and redoubled her efforts at getting past the cyclone of death that was Lucy. She glanced around for her husband. Where is he?

It was not concern for him that she felt, of course, but a desire to kill him herself. He didn’t know it, but she had years ago visited his little secret in the catacombs. He thought he was invincible; that no vampire would dare oppose him after the revelations that came to light when he had her cousin executed. He would be cocky, would not defend himself. He would be quintessentially himself. And then she would show him who was really boss.

She didn’t see him, which meant one of two things: either he had died from the initial blasts of sunlight, his body now ash, or he had escaped and still lived. He was coward enough to hide. Not a real man at all.

As her eyes scanned the plaza, she caught a glimpse of one of her men, a human sentry, running from the eye of the Lucy storm. It would seem that the lady of death had killed a comrade of his, for this man was dragging the top half of another to the edge of the plaza. Sofia watched as the sentry noticed the web of dirty, torn entrails where his friend’s legs should be and screamed. Her eyes narrowed with hate as she watched this sentry of hers release his comrade’s underarms, clutch his face in horror, glance up at the bloody melee, and then turn to run.

Coward!

Sofia bolted from her square of ground and intercepted the fleeing man, coming in from the side, entering his peripheral vision at the same time that her smooth, polished-nail-clad hands clutched him by the throat and lifted him a half-meter off the ground, his legs and feet still trying to run. The sentry’s hands instinctively went to his throat and clawed feebly at Sofia’s fingers. He looked like he wanted to say something, to scream perhaps, or maybe beg for mercy, but not even the sound of escaping air could breach the collapsed tunnel of his throat.

“Mama had a baby and its head popped off.” Sofia’s eyes lit up with wicked glee. Her nostrils flared, and her lips peeled back in a sneer. Her fingers closed into a fist, and the sentry’s head rolled to one side and hung there, still attached by flaps of skin to the body that now drooped from below Sofia’s clenched fist. She glowered at her ragtag army.

“Immortality to those who bring me their heads! Death to all cowards! Death to the families of cowards! I will fucking kill every last one of you! Me cago en todo lo que se menea!”

That seemed to do the trick. The attention of her men lingered on her only long enough to watch her relax her grip on the sack of skin that used to be the man’s neck and then throw his ragdoll body to the ground.

Fully in the grip of bloodlust, Sofia launched herself into the throng, gunning for Lucy instead