The sound that left Vesper’s throat was not a high-born hiss, nor was it the proud, fierce snarl of a climbing hunting beast.
It was a sharp, strangled whimper of sheer living agony that froze Arthur’s blood in his veins.
The slender white panthress slid off Arthur’s shoulder. Her legs folded beneath her as she hit the marble floor. Her spine arched wildly, her small ribs heaving against the cold stone as all four sets of razor-thin spatial claws involuntarily deployed. She extended two inches past her velvet pads to gouge deep, uncontrolled furrows through the shattered tiles.
Beneath her clean, silver-white fur, a web of pitch-black, thread-like veins erupted across her neck and shoulders.
The veins didn’t pulse with blood. They pulsed with an oily, living-glow violet soft glow that writhed and squirmed beneath her skin like living parasites. Everywhere the black threads touched, the fine white fur turned brittle and gray, withering into clumps of rotting ash.
“Vesper!” Arthur dropped to his knees in an instant, his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine clattering to the floor beside him.
He reached out, but the moment his fingers touched her neck, an electric shock of cold, jagged sub-spatial distortion surged through his gauntlet, burning through the padded rubber and stinging his palm with icy numbness.
