Tooth and Claw - Doranna Durgin [41]
Riker’s inspection of the area revealed nothing. If there was anything out there, anything close, he couldn’t spot it. And the Tsorans hadn’t waited, hadn’t even slowed down; there was no point in standing out here alone, exposed. He turned back to the trail—easy to follow, given all the foliage that had been hacked, broken, and otherwise disturbed—and instantly froze in place at the movement directly before his feet.
He couldn’t even tell what it was, not at first—only that in the tangle of roots, leaves, and fallen branches at his feet, something moved. A gliding motion, with no beginning to it and no ending. Gray-green patterns meant to distract his eyes did just that, and he stared, baffled, not sure if he was about to die or if he was merely seeing things.
And then the shapes and patterns snapped abruptly into place, and the primordial part of his brain, the part that still lived in caves and walked on all fours, bellowed snake!
Damn big snake, bulky and stretching from here to there, neither end visible, its body muscular and lumpy … as if the last meal hadn’t quite settled down yet. He assessed the thing’s girth, looked down at himself it’d be a tight fit.
But it would be a fit.
Had he seen anything on snakes in the museum? Were they poisonous, were they constrictors … would this one even care that it had crossed his path? Would it leave him alone if he simply waited for it to pass, or was it circling back? If he moved, would that draw its otherwise uncaring attention? He hadn’t seen the tail of it yet; it just seemed to go on forever. He could well believe
that this end could be passing him by while the front end came by for a second look.
For another moment, he hesitated, not sure of the best move. Then … what the hell. If he was going to be eaten by the biggest snake in the universe, he’d do it with flair. He leapt over the cumbrous girth of the creature, landing as far away as he could get—and as lightly as he could manage.
Not far enough, not lightly enough—the snake whipped around, a lightning-fast motion he hadn’t begun to suspect it possessed, whacking him across the back of the legs even as he intended to put more distance between them. Shouldn’t have hesitated, shouldn’t have taken that one look back—Riker went down, breaking through the foliage with his face, landing with his arms outspread and his fingers splayed against the ground, the bat’leth under his open palm—little good it could do him while he sprawled so thoroughly across the fungus-filled ground. He tried to flip himself around, hindered by the leaves and branches that clung to him, nearly blinded by whatever had gotten into his eyes—and was stopped short by the thick muscular body suddenly clinging to his calves. Not only clinging to them, working its way up with a prickly, gripping oddness, pinning his thighsRiker twisted to discover that the snake had legs. Or hands. Small, three-fingered hands that had emerged from a protective groove along its side and now clung happily to his trousers while the tip of the tail—finally visible—curled around to possessively claim an ankle.
And then he heard the rustling glide of the front half, coming back for its share.
The shock of it, the hesitation, left him—and left him cold and grim and moving. With a growl, he snatched up
the bat’leth and heaved himself up to his knees, whipping around to bisect the tail with the sap-sticky blade.
Too thick—it was too thick, and he didn’t have the leverage—the blade sunk two-thirds of the way through and stuck there, and Riker clung grimly while the tail flailed against him, battering him, knowing he couldn’t afford to lose the weapon and hoping that There Slicked by the creature’s own blood, loosened by its own contortions, the bat’leth abruptly yanked loose; Riker fell back with the momentum of it and turned it into a roll, his legs free of the creepy, clinging hand fingers and his feet solidly under him—just in time to see the head of the monster shooting toward him,