The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,86
down his guard, someone or something would be waiting to exploit his moment of weakness.
His full bladder reminded him that he had come out here for a reason. He cast out with his danger sense, thinking wryly how ridiculous it would be to be caught with his pants down by some desert animal, but the only impression he got of life came from a couple hundred yards off, at the base of the canyon wall, and even that wasn’t dangerous. In fact, its psionic impression was one of warmth and contentment.
This I’ve got to see, he thought as he finished his business and walked toward the consciousness he had sensed. He approached it cautiously, but his danger sense continued to tell him there was no threat so he climbed over the rocks near the base of the canyon wall until he found what he was looking for. There, in a tunnel burrowed beneath a boulder, was a jankx den, with two slender, golden babies curled up around each other, their long snouts tucked beneath their paws as they slept.
Jedra’s immediate response was to look for the mother, but after a moment’s thought he realized what had happened. Jankx foraged at night and slept by day; if the mother wasn’t there with her babies this late in the morning it could only mean she was dead. Either something had caught her in the night, or the storm had killed her.
Jedra knelt there looking at the babies and wondering what to do with them. He had always thought of jankx as food animals, and relatively troublesome ones at that, since they had poison spurs in their paws, but he couldn’t eat these two babies. Nor, he realized, could he just leave them to starve. But he couldn’t bring them food in their den, because a scavenger would eventually find them and they wouldn’t have any defense. He was just coming to the realization that he would have to build some kind of cage and take care of them until they matured when his danger sense finally twinged and he looked up to see a pair of lean, gray zhackals loping down the canyon toward him.
He immediately reached into the den with his telekinetic power and lifted the baby jankx out. They awoke and began to squirm, making tiny, high-pitched squeaks. The zhackals’ ears perked up, and they increased their speed, running straight for Jedra. He took off toward the house, but he’d only gone a few steps before he realized that he wouldn’t make it before they reached him. Not in the kind of shape he was in. He kept running anyway, trying to get as close as he could before he had to turn and fight.
When he looked over his shoulder again he saw three more zhackals emerging from farther up the canyon. There was no way he could stand up against that many. Maybe he and Kayan together could, but not now, not this quickly. He had time for only one thing, and he did it without hesitation: He threw the jankx babies into the path of the foremost two zhackals.
He was afraid they would ignore the smaller prey, but zhackals preferred not to fight when they didn’t have to. These were content with a smaller meal; the two chasing Jedra skidded to a stop and grabbed the jankx by their tails, flipping them playfully into the air and catching them again in their fanged mouths.
Disgusted with himself as much as the zhackals, Jedra ran the last few yards to the house and stood by the door, panting, while the other zhackals caught up to the first two and joined in the fun. Jedra considered pelting them with rocks now that he was safe, but it was too late to save the baby jankx so it seemed a pointless gesture. Let the zhackals have their snack. The babies would have died anyway, so it really didn’t matter. Except that Jedra felt even worse than if he had never known they existed. He glanced over at the downed tree, shook his head, and went back inside.
Kayan was in the kitchen, working the pump handle up and down to refill the jug they kept on the counter, but her arms were so frail she couldn’t get up any speed and nothing was coming out of the spout.
“Here, let me get that for you,” Jedra said, reaching down into the well psionically to lift some water out.