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  “Warning—Hull Breach! Warning—Hull Breach! Oxygen loss imminent. All passengers should evacuate immediately.”

  “Oh my God!” I looked at Grav. “What—”

  That was as far as I got before one of the skinny metal spiders fell from the ceiling above my head and landed right in my lap.

  I shrieked in wordless terror—roaches aren’t the only creepy crawlies I hate—and propelled myself into Grav’s lap.

  “Careful, darlin’!” He narrowly avoided stabbing me with his knife but I barely noticed. I was too busy shaking my legs like crazy, trying to get rid of the awful metal spider. And then I heard Teeny’s voice, coming out soft and frightened.

  “Grav,” she whispered. “The…the ceiling.”

  I looked up instinctively and saw to my horror that the metal spider which had fallen on me had friends. They were squeezing in through the narrow hole the first bug had made and boiling across the ceiling in a wave of long, thin, needle-tipped legs and sleek, fat silver bodies.

  I don’t know if you remember that old show—Fear Factor? The one where they subjected contestants to their worst fears? Sometimes they would take somebody and lay them down inside a clear plastic box and then dump bugs all over them.

  I couldn’t stand to watch when they did that—I had to change the channel and concentrate hard on something else. Just the idea of having that happen to me freaked me out. So you can imagine how actually having it happen made me feel.

  I panicked.

  My heart started racing so hard I could hear it pounding in my ears—my breath came in short, ragged gasps and I started to feel dizzy and ill. My hands got cold and clammy and I thought I might go crazy if I couldn’t get out of the shuttle. It had seemed roomy enough earlier—even too big, since it was made for alien males Grav’s size, not Earth-sized females like me.

  But now with the spiders filling the ceiling and beginning to rain down on us, it seemed no bigger than a coffin—a tight silver coffin filled with bugs that were squirming all over me.

  “Oh my God!” I gasped, writhing like a fish all over poor Grav’s lap. “They’re in my hair—they’re in my hair!”

  It was true. I felt their long, silver legs tangling in my long strands. And then they were skittering over my shoulders and arms and up and down my legs. They were even getting on my face! I stopped screaming and clamped my mouth shut—no way did I want one of them in there!

  But then I couldn’t breathe. My lungs were constricting with panic and behind me I could hear Teeny screaming and twisting around, trying frantically to get the spiders off her as well.

  The only one who kept his head was Grav. He kept one arm around me and with the other, he smashed as many of the metallic spiders as he could. They made crunching-splattering sounds and their soft gooey innards—which were a bright, poisonous shade of green—came raining down on our heads.

  I didn’t know which was worse—the dead spiders or the live spiders. Either way, I felt like my heart was about to burst in my chest I was so completely freaked out.

  Oh my God, I moaned inwardly, since I didn’t dare to open my mouth, lest a spider get inside. OhmyGod,OhmyGod,OhmyGod!

  And then a cold, female voice spoke from overhead.

  “Be still!” it commanded sharply. “Cease this useless thrashing or my minions will be forced to sting you.”

  I was so surprised that for a moment I did hold still. Where was the voice coming from? From one of the spiders? From the hole in the ceiling which was gradually letting out our oxygen? Even now it was getting hard to breath but I honestly didn’t know if that was from lack of O2 or the fact that my entire body was in overdrive.

  And then, as I looked up, another spider fell—right on my face.

  So much for being still. I shrieked and fishtailed my body wildly, batting at the horrid thing, trying to get it off.

  “Very well,” I heard the voice hiss. “Stinging it shall be since you refuse to be still!”

  “Wait!” Grav roared. But it was too late. The spider that had fallen on my face crawled around to the back of my neck, right under my hair. (Gee, I wonder why I couldn’t be still and stop freaking out?) And then I felt a sharp, stinging pain, as though someone had jabbed me with an eighteen gage needle just at the base of my skull.

  I opened my mouth to scream but I didn’t have a chance before everything abruptly went black.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Grav

  I woke up to a nightmare.

  The first thing I knew was that there was a cold blue light shining in my eyes, half blinding me. The second thing was, I had a headache fit to split my skull—probably from those damn metal spiders. I could still feel a throbbing at the base of my neck where several of them had stung the hell out of me.

  The third thing I realized was that I couldn’t move—couldn’t so much as twitch a muscle.

  Why? Was I paralyzed? Had those damn spiders incapacitated me that much?

  Blinking my eyes I looked down, trying to figure it out. Finally my eyes adjusted to the brilliant blue light and I was able to see. The good news was, I wasn’t paralyzed. The bad news was, I might as well be.

  Leah, Teeny and I were all wrapped up, our limbs held in place against our bodies by long, sticky white threads. Not only that but we were in the center of a web made of the same threads, held in a half-reclining position. I tried to see other details about the room we were in—which seemed to be extremely large—but the light shining in my eyes was so bright it cast everything else into shadows.

  The webbing—because that was what it was—had a rancid, sickly-sweet odor, not unlike the rotten meat back on Chndra that had covered Teeny’s scent so well even my sensitive nose had missed her. Speaking of Teeny and Leah, were they okay?

  I looked over at them again. Teeny still looked passed out, her pale face slack with unconsciousness. Leah, however, was beginning to come around. I saw her long lashes flutter open and she blinked, taking stock of the situation just as I had.

  “Leah,” I said hoarsely. “Leah, darlin’—you okay?”

  “I think so.” She tried to move her head and groaned. “Ugh—my head isn’t okay though. Feels like I have the worst hangover ever.”

  “Yeah. Probably a reaction to the spider venom,” I muttered.

  “I guess.” She got an anxious look on her face. “Are they all off me? I can’t stand having bugs on me Grav. I mean, I really can’t stand it.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out, darlin’,” I said dryly, remembering the way she’d been bucking and writhing all over my lap. “Don’t worry—I don’t see any on you. I think you’re safe. Well, as safe as any of us is.”

  “Where are we?” she asked, squinting as she tried to look around the brilliant blue light shining in our faces. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Me neither,” I growled. “This light is screwing with my eyes like fuckin’ crazy.”

  “What are we going to do?” she asked. “Do you still have your knife? Can you cut your way out?”

  It was a good question. The knife in question was my best fighting blade and it had saved my ass more than once. I thought I could still feel it, tucked into my boot, but there was no way I could reach it—not trussed up like I was. The white webbing wrapped around my body put the Binding-warrant Captain Verrai had wanted to put on me to shame.

  “Grav?” It was Teeny—her voice a faint little whisper. She was finally waking up and her big violet eyes looked hazy and uncertain. “Grav, where are we?”

  “Don’t know just yet, sweetheart,” I said, though I thought I had a pretty good idea. “Just hang tight, all right?”

  “Okay, but—” she started but just then a cold, female voice—the same one I remembered hearing inside the shuttle—spoke.

  “Well, well, Braxian. I’ve waited a long time to meet you,” she said. “You’re quite an impressive specimen, just as I was promised.”

  “Who’s there?