AVP Ultimate Prey 45

She'd stalked the scouting party. One of them had fought well. Faster than Yeh'kull had expected, the male had cut her. She'd cached his spine and skull to take with her when the elders came. She'd killed a second scout, but took the third captive. Part of Yeh'kull's role as ecologist was to learn what she could of local dialects and add that information to the translator's algorithm. The humans here had a previously unknown dialect, one that gave her translator program no end of trouble. That could happen when a human population grew in isolation for a long time, and as yet Yeh'kull had no idea how long these primitive people had been on this world.

She had tried to learn what she could
from the captive, but the captive had proven weak and useless. Crying, stammering, the captive had repeated one word over and over again-dee-mon.
In other human cultures, that was often a word for ghost, or monster. Considering how primitive this place was, it wasn't surprising that the humans here embraced religious superstition. The scout had thought Yeh'kull was a monster? From the scout's perspective, perhaps that was accurate. The captive had bled out before Yeh'kull could make further progress, giving her three trophies to take from him. But they'd been so easy to collect. Despite the wound, she'd never been in real danger. She'd craved a bigger challenge, one that brought more honor-a challenge like killing a leader and then evading the ninety-six soldiers that had gathered to investigate Yeh'kull's kill.-pg.380 chpt.14