It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like RAPTORS by Ben Wolf

Author:Ben Wolf [Wolf, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781942462583
Amazon: 1942462581
Publisher: ‎Splickety Publishing Group
Published: 2021-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

An explosion of pain ripped through the Time Raptor’s chest. Santa Claus’s aim had been true, and dozens of metal beads cleaved through his flesh, shattered his sternum, and displaced his ribs on their way to gouging deep into his heart and lungs.

He felt every malicious bite and sting of the weapon’s power, and his whole body shuddered as he fully emerged from the rift. The shotgun’s payload had slowed his lunge, but only slightly, and he still collided with Santa, knocking him to the floor.

Blood and chunks of bone and organs poured out of his wounded chest like a waterfall, every bit as gruesome as the worst horrors he’d inflicted on prey in his past life. The difference between then and now, having attained sentience, was that he fully comprehended every facet of his current situation.

The blow was definitely enough to kill him, he knew, but this had been a calculated—and necessary—risk. If he hadn’t intervened when he did, and if Santa had touched the bulb, all would’ve been lost, including his very existence.

Yet with Santa pinned to the floor and the Time Raptor bleeding out on top of him, he couldn’t definitively say this was any better. Between the excruciating pain, the rapid blood loss, and the dozens of machine gun rounds and violet crossbow bolts now pelting his body, he, the Lord of Time and Space, was literally running out of time.

He possessed the strength for one last act, and only one. Santa and his wretched companions had opened the vault door for him. It would be such a waste if he failed to realize his true potential after coming so close to reaching it.

So that’s exactly what he did: he reached for it.

With his mouth.

He pushed himself off the floor, taking bolts and bullets to his flank, his arms, his neck, and even his head, but he managed to open his mouth wide and clamp it down over the glowing blue bulb. His blood-saturated tongue ushered it toward the back of his throat, and he gulped it down.

Then he collapsed next to Santa, suddenly blind and devoid of energy. His senses began to fade, and the constant prodding of projectiles dulled to taps along his skin and tickles within his flesh.

He was dying. Had he been too late?

His hearing abandoned him next, then he no longer smelled the coppery tang of his own blood. Soon after that, there was nothing anymore.

All that remained was a vision in his mind’s eye, but it had come too late.

It was already done.

He’d failed.

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