Faceted, fixed, protuberant, glassy, they were insectile!
The eyes of a beetle, a coleopteron!
A phrase she'd used came back: "... while my children feast...."
Through the horror and shock that froze him, he heard Sark shouting: "Seize him! Seize him—!"
Hands clutched his arms. They jerked him back and pinned him down.
Xaymar said; "So at last you know ..." and now her voice crawled with hate and fury.
Haral did not answer.
She raved at him: "Yes! I am of the coleoptera—a mutant, and a hybrid! Now you know how I gave them the power of thought! Those that think are my own children, my descendants! And now you know, too, why I took a thousand human lovers, and slew each one before the dawn. For I have human passion hot within me, but no man could forbear to look beneath my veil, and with my brain close-tuned to theirs, I felt the horror well up in them—the same disgust and loathing that even you cannot conceal. So I killed them, that they might never tell my secret—"
She broke off. Her hands clenched till blood spurted where the nails gouged through the palms. Her voice rose—hysterical, vindictive. "Throw him alive into the arena! Yes, let my children feast upon him—!"