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Belatedly, Dean realized that the“other one” she was referring to was him. He realized it when Jurz, moving much faster on his bulky back legs than he’d expected, whirled around, pushed off with a thick tapering tail, and landed behind him, grabbing both his upper arms in a painful grip. He froze as talons pierced his shirt and punctured the skin. Even if he’d been able to turn, the lizard’s body would have blocked his view of the elevator.

“Good gorg, Coriz, this one’s huge!”

Coriz leaned forward and peered nearsightedly down at him, holding the boy tighter against her chest.“And it’s a funny color.”

Dean felt his hair being lifted by the force of Jurz’ inhalation.

“And it’s clean! Maybe,” he added thoughtfully, “we could eat it.”

“Eat it! Are you out of your mind?” Coriz sat back on her tail, shifting her hold on the boy. “It’s still a filthy egg-sucker no matter how clean it is. People get sick from eating those vermin!”

“Hey!” The insult broke through the terror. “Who’re you callin’ vermin?”

Both lizards stiffened. The boy continued struggling.

“Look, this whole thing is a major misunderstanding.” It took an effort to speak calmly with five small, painful holes in each arm, but Dean managed. Coriz stared at him—with no nose, nor eyebrows, nor lips to speak of, he couldn’t read her expression, but he could feel the weight of Jurz’ gaze on the top of his head. He obviously had their attention. All he had to do was stall until Claire arrived to save him. “Why don’t we just talk this over….”

“Talk?” Coriz squeaked and dropped the boy.

Who took off at a dead run, occasionally using his hands against the rock for better speed as he escaped.

“Talk?” she repeated, rearing back on her tail. “It TALKS?”

“Of course it doesn’t talk,” Jurz muttered nervously. “It’s just making sounds, imitating speech.”

Although he couldn’t be positive, Dean thought the female lizard looked relieved. “No! You’re wrong!” Struggling drove the talons in deeper. “I’m talking!”

They ignored him.

“Imitating speech, of course.” Coriz sighed, the tension leaving her narrow shoulders.

“I’m not imitating…”

“Still, it does seem somehow more evolved than the others we’ve caught.”

Jurz’ grip shifted, poking new holes into his left arm. Without the talons filling the punctures, the originals began to dribble blood. “Do I kill it?”

“Of course you kill it.”

“Hey!”

“Hopefully, it hasn’t bred. Just imagine if the egg-suckers started to think.” She shuddered. “They do enough damage to the nests now.”

On cue came the horrible sound of smashing shells.

“MY BABIES!”

Jurz dropped Dean, smacked him toward the lava pit with his tail, and raced after his howling mate. Fortunately, he misjudged either the distance or the weight of the object he was attempting to sink.

Legs out over the pit, bottoms of his jeans beginning to scorch and his feet inside the steel toes of his workboots uncomfortably hot, hands abraded by the hardened lava, Dean stopped himself at the last possible instant. Rolling forward, he collapsed as flat as the terrain allowed, trying to catch his breath.

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“Come on!” Claire knew she didn’t have a hope of lifting Dean if he was actually injured, but that didn’t stop her from grabbing at his arm and hauling upward. “Jacques isn’t going to hold them for long.” The fabric compacted warm and damp under her hands.

Sucking in an unwelcome lungful of air, Dean shook her off and, coughing, heaved himself up onto his feet.“Jacques?”

“He’s dead. They can’t hurt him.” Claire gaped at the smear of red across her palms. “How bad is it?”

“Not bad.”

“Can you run?”

He shoved his glasses back into place.“Sure. No problem.”

Side by side they pounded back toward the elevator propelled by enraged howls and French Canadian invective.

Twenty feet from safety, Jacques caught up.“I have no smell,” he explained, effortlessly keeping pace.“Les lezards, they count the eggs but that should not take them…”

The howls changed timbre.

“…long.”

When Dean stopped to roll a hunk of obsidian away from the door, Claire hip-checked him over the threshold, grabbed the rock, and flung it toward their pursuers.

The howls changed again.

“OW! Coriz, they hit me with a rock!”

“Egg-suckers don’t use weapons.”

“But I’ve got a bump!”

The door cut off further diagnosis.

“What part,” Claire gasped, dropping the gate into place and turning to glare at Dean, “of no one leaves the elevator did you not understand?”

“They were about to kill the kid.”

“So? He was robbing their nest. Stealing their eggs. Making omelets.”

“I couldn’t just watch him die!”

“Then we should have closed the door.”

“You don’t mean that.”

She did. Or she thought she did until she met his eyes and discovered that he believed she’d have gone to the rescue herself had he not been there. “Forget it. Go straight to the basement. No arguments.”

Dean pushed the lever all the way to the left“No arguments,” he agreed. Passing the second floor, he glanced over at Jacques. “Did you really break one of their eggs?”