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

inviting gesture. A mass of tentacles writhed and reached as hard as they could, their mouths opening and closing in a dying, gasping-for-air kind of way.

Jon steadied his face and pulled it back slightly as one does who is repulsed by what they see. The flashing needles blurred in and out of the gasping circular tube mouths, nearly pricking Jon’s skin, so close were they. The slithering sound coming from the hundred mouths was nearly deafening at this range. Jon’s heart began to race again. A bead of salty, nervous sweat rolled down and over his flaring nostril.

“You want this, you son of a bitch? Huh? You want this?” Jon taunted, more to help stave off his nervous tension than out of bravado. If the urchin heard or understood him, it gave no sign. It simply continued to pull against the chains and flash its hundred needles in Jon’s face. Jon closed his eyes and time seemed to stop. He lifted his head up to the dark ceiling, opening his core up more to the urchin and hoping to avoid any needles in the eyes. One last deep breath, and then Jon took a half step forward, placing himself into the sea of hungry tentacles.

They accepted his flesh ravenously. The tube mouths latched on to him all over his body and lifted him off the ground. Fortunately for him, the saliva in the tube mouths acted as a mild neurotoxin and numbed Jon’s flesh to the needles’ rapid and repeated penetration. Once each mouth-spot had been pierced a couple of dozen times—which took a matter of seconds—and the blood was good and flowing, the tubes began to suck the life out of Jon’s body, which was exactly what he wanted.

Feeling no pain, only a high-like sensation that increased moment by moment, Jon maintained his arms-wide-open, head-held-high pose and let the urchin drink him. He only hoped that it wouldn’t drink him dry before…

Due to the numbing effect, Jon couldn’t feel the flow of blood slow as the creature quit sucking and only held him there, his blood flowing naturally from the needle wounds, but he did notice the growing euphoric sensation stabilize. He kept his eyes closed but did exhale a half laugh and mutter, “Got you, bloodsucker.” The demon-urchin more spat him out than threw him. He found his body to be considerably weaker than usual as he crashed into the stone bricks of the chamber’s interior walls and then fell limply to the floor.

He lay there and chuckled weakly. He couldn’t stand up if he’d wanted to, but he did manage to roll his head up and watched as the demon-urchin begin to glow with the now rapidly reproducing serum-enhanced blood cells in its alien body.

“Burn, baby, burn.”

Unable to watch what was sure to come next, Maya closed her eyes just as Don Luis Fernando grabbed the side of Lucy’s expressionless face.

We’ve failed! To come this far—Warbak, Home—only to fail now! It’s not right!

The plaza had grown so quiet, the goddess could hear the sound of her heart breaking. She wondered for a second about Carbine. Would he get away? She wondered a second longer about Jon. Had he already met the fate that was about to befall Lucy, with Ratt and herself soon to follow?

Interrupting the measured beats of her pounding heart and ringing ears, Maya heard a gasp.

Afraid of what she knew she would see, yet moving like a marionette, she opened her eyes.

“It worked! Our plan worked! Jon did it!” Ratt called out.

A second gasp, smaller than the first, full of surprise and hope, leapt from Maya’s tight throat.

Don Luis had relaxed his grip on Lucy’s head and taken a step backward. He held both of his hands palm up and was studying them. Then, with a jerking spasm, he turned his surprised gaze to Maya.

She saw in his pale red eyes complete and utter bewilderment, which twisted and melted into dread understanding, followed by panic.

“You have played me!” he screeched, his voice cracking.

A light, not dissimilar to the one that had glowed beneath Jon’s skin when pushed to his limits, began to grow within Don Luis.

He held his hands back up to his face and studied the growing glow inside his doomed body.

Then, like the crucial piece of burning kindling carefully placed under the tinder, his glow seemed to spread to the other vampires in the plaza—for while the urchin was his progenitor, he was, in turn, the father of all New Puebla’s privileged class.

Maya didn’t even flinch when he began to scream. The heat and brightness coming from within him was so intense at this moment that she couldn’t even make out the outline of his body, only light, as bright, blinding, and hot as the sun. The same thing was happening to the other vampires in the plaza for only a second, and then the light became so bright as to blind her completely.

Relieved, knowing that they had beaten the devil, Maya succumbed to her exhaustion, drained from the trauma of the night's events and from pushing herself beyond her normal Strange-shaping abilities. She crumpled to the ground and passed out before her head came to a stop.

A moment later, Don Luis Fernando, along with every single vampire in New Puebla, was no more than ashes drifting through the night on a slight breeze.

When Jon limped into the plaza, dragging his hammer behind him, the human population of New Puebla was still in shock, doing nothing more than standing around and mumbling to each other. No one moved to help or harm Lucy and Maya, both of whom lay on the stone floor amidst small piles of ash and black scorch marks. Likewise, no one accosted, questioned, or otherwise did anything to Jon except step out of his way and stare at him.

He looked as much of a mess as the stage and plaza. His wounds had stopped bleeding—the serum brought rapid cell regeneration along with its death