by Godwin, Pam
Roark stood over the headless aphid, gore clinging to his sword and cassock. He tapped the Imago’s head with his boot. It rolled from the body.
Jade eyes rose, searched mine. He sheathed the sword, crossed the distance between us in three huge leaps, and pulled me into his embrace.
“Love,” he drawled. Ah, the lilt of that one word. A silken caress.
Giant hands framed my face. I reached for his, mimicking him. Whiskers scratched my palms. Our eyes locked. His exhale was my inhale. So much was said in that shared look. I knew his regrets, his fears, his heart and he knew mine.
Then he took my mouth, a dusting of lips in tender greeting. All too quick, his reluctant release tugged at my bottom lip, a pledge for another time.
Michio staggered to his feet. Something dangerous clouded his eyes, and it was aimed at Roark. “We need to go, Father Molony.” Then he wrapped a possessive hand around mine and pulled.
I pulled back, spearing him with a look that unclenched his fingers, and turned to Roark.
Dark membranes caked his face, his curls, his calloused hands. He’d sliced his way there. Getting out would be much of the same. My chest clenched. “Lose your clothes.”
His freckled forehead scrunched into his hairline.
My lips twitched. “You can keep the pants.” I tackled the buttons at his chest. “Don’t have time to explain. Just trust me, okay?”
His hands brushed mine aside. A moment later, his cassock and shirt hit the floor.
“You siphoned him to get past the guards upstairs?” Michio gestured to the dead cook.
“Yeah. And you were right about something else.” I raised my chewed up palm. “Toxic blood.”
The rip of fabric responded. Michio held up long pieces of his abandoned shirt and tied one over my hand.
Deep grooves bracketed Roark’s eyes, which were locked on my bandage. “Wha’ toxic blood?”
Michio secured another strip around the gash on my thigh, a smile in his voice. “Hers. It’s poisonous to the aphids. We can discuss the mechanics later.” His eyes turned to me. “Head up with the priest. I’m two minutes behind you.”
I ran toward the exit. “Where’s Jesse?”
Roark’s drawl followed me into the stairwell. “Distracting the Drone.”
The feeling I’d been ignoring, the one tapping at the edges of my mind, materialized like a knife in the chest. Jesse was the breach, the explosion.
I raced out of the bowels of one hell to rise into another.
Though my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.
Sarah Williams
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: RISE IN PERFECT LIGHT
Humidity thickened as we rose from the basement. Roark in the lead, we took the stairs two at a time. The steps behind slipped into nothingness.
“Michio,” I shouted into the black cavity.
“Two minutes behind, remember?” Roark’s naked lats contracted through his jog. “Tell me”—he panted—“why I’m not wearing me duds.”
“You know how skin-to-skin blocks my nightmares?”
We stumbled on. A passing torchlight illuminated his nodding head.
“Same thing helps me communicate with the bugs. I can control them. There’s a masculine energy—Michio calls it Yang—that I can somehow borrow for strength, through skin.”
“Sounds like ye got lamped in your noggin, love.”
I touched the swelling egg on my head. Yeah, lamped by an obnoxious gold pistol.
A few silent strides later, he said, “Last time I saw ye, I was scran for the aphids. Ye saved me life.”
“I don’t know how, but it works.” I gave him an abbreviated explanation of Yin and Yang and the body. My voice whispered along the flagstone walls until we paused at the final step. Footfalls padded from the depths below. Michio’s jet eyes emerged from the dark.
“What took you so long?” I asked.
Three knives were pressed against my chest. Then the turquoise rock swung above me, dimmed gray by the dark.
A fist of emotions grabbed hold of my esophagus and squeezed. He delayed, risked his life, to collect my knives and my necklace. “Michio.” A choke.
He tied it around my neck, staring into my eyes. I tried fill my expression with all the things I wanted to say, feelings I couldn’t form into words.
Too soon, he looked away, blank mask in place. “Can you feel how many?”
I touched his face, angled his cheek against mine, and imbibed his Yang. My stomach stirred and the trill coiled up my spine. Fingers of energy stretched from my chest, seeking. Vibes bounced back along a dozen invisible threads. “Twelve, at least.”
The muscle in his jaw twitched.
I leaned back. “I held at least that many to get here.”
Lines crimped his brow and vanished just as fast. His chest flexed under the strap of his bag as he reached behind his back and pulled out a long narrow staff. Where the hell did that come from?
“I’ll lead.” He glared at Roark. “Constant contact with her will be more effective than your sword.”
“Hmm. A weapon upgrade. I’m trading up for one with curves.”
“Stop it.” I tried for a scolding tone but my smile ruined it.
A gruff noise scraped from Michio’s throat and his eyes hardened, locked on Roark. “Where was the explosion?”
“Southwest corner.” Roark pushed away from the wall.
Black eyes narrowed. “The drive entrance? Our only access to the street?”
Roark grinned. “Wen’ be needing a car.”
Understanding softened Michio’s features.
Confusion twisted mine. “The explosion was you?” I asked Roark.
“Jesse.”
It sounded both odd and strangely comforting to hear Jesse’s name whispered in Roark’s lyrical accent. “And we’re meeting him where?”
“The dock,” Michio answered. “Ready?”
I solidified my link with the aphids. “Red-eyed and hair-lipped.”
Two gorgeous faces, frozen in puzzlement, stared at me. I sighed and shooed them with the knives.
Blackness draped the corridor. Our pace plodded until our eyes adjusted. Illuminated silhouettes wavered at the end of the hall.
“Eight behind us,” I whispered. “They don’t see us.”
Shadowed heaps came into focus as we stole through the passage. Bodies stacked waist high, sans heads.
“Well done, Father.” Michio nodded, sidling around a headless slump.
The husk of a sconce dangled on the wall next to my face. “Something ate the torches.”
“Sorry, love. Me night vision is better than the sodding snarlies’.” Roark lifted a shoulder. “So I killed the lights.”
The coppery scent of blood smothered the narrow space. Thick plip-plops resonated between the suction of our bare feet as we mucked through.
I jumped over a stretch of disembodied parts with the help of Roark’s hands on my hips. He set me down, but his arms wrapped around me, fingers tracing my ribs. “Ye lost a rake of kilos.”
Michio cut his eyes at me. His expression said nothing. It didn’t have to. After weeks of forced meals, I knew what he was thinking. “I’m fine.”
“Ach. You’re a pull through for a rifle, love. Feels like I’m hugging a throwing star.”
Hard to sound threatening while leaning into his attentive fingers, but I gave my best growl. “This is not the time—”
He pinched my ass. “Den’ get narky.” His head lowered. Lips brushed my earlobe. “You’re still sexy as hell.”
“Nix the flirting—” My insides jumped.
A green flicker sprang from the bend up ahead. Three more followed. I shaped my command, sent it winding up and out. Stop.
A slow hiss replaced the scraping of feet. The glowing forms stilled.
“There’s four ahead, blocking the d
oor. Roark, I’m going to move to Michio. Then I’ll hold them while you gut them? ’kay?”
He pressed his lips to my brow and turned us, guiding my back to Michio’s chest.
I clutched the arms snaking around my waist and followed the wall. Bones cracked underfoot. Mold and death weighted the air. And Stay was a staccato beating on my ribs.
We approached the waiting chomps of jowls. Strings of ichor-like dribble doused the walls. Ribs expanded and vibrated under their diaphanous skin.
I hissed back and reinforced the invisible wall of resistance.
The sword whooshed. A wet thud followed by another. Two left.
All-white eyes held mine, silent and steady, despite the distortion in its androgynous face. Then the eyes went flat and the head rolled off the shoulders.
“Bloody hell, that was easy.” Roark grabbed my hand, pulled us forward. “Could’ve used ye on me way in.”
I stepped around the fourth body, one I hadn’t even seen him kill.
A few paces ahead, we stumbled into the quadrangle. My stomach churned. Dozens of silent cravings stitched through me.
“Oh no.” I ground my teeth as the demands multiplied, fragmented my own. “We’re not alone.”
The rosy slivered moon offered no light. Not that I needed it. A fluorescent ring of squirming mouths and striking claws erected around us.
Weapons shot up. Roark’s sword. Michio’s staff.
“Where’s my carbine?” Trapped and outnumbered, I shook with the effort to hold the aphids with will alone.
“With your Lakota,” Roark said, eyes probing the dark.
“Where’s my Lakota?”
He spun in a circle, lips pinched. “Plan A, we meet him a’ the boat.”
“And Plan B?”
“We meet his team a’ the boat.”
If we made it to the boat. My throat dried up, strangled by streamers of predatory need.
“How many?” Michio’s neutral voice.
I blew my hair out of my face. “Dozens and growing. I can hold some of them but we’re fighting our way to the exit.”
“And Aiman?” Michio asked.
The warmth of the bricks soaked into the soles of my feet. A tepid gust swept in with the thunder of the tide. My stomach growled with hunger that wasn’t mine. I reached beyond that basic need and followed the darkest thread. Flickering and angry, it led me up, up, up…there. “The tower. My chamber.” Then, with a snap, the connection blinked out. Dammit, he knew how to shut me out the way I shut out him.
Michio tilted his head and studied me sidelong. “How many can you hold?”
I pulled his back to my chest without losing contact with Roark. “I’m holding the ones in front. The rest are mindless with hunger. I can feel them pushing through the horde, getting closer.”
We sidled toward the exit, the circle of aphids shifting with us. Then the inner ring shrank, halting us.
“We’ll fight them off with our backs to you, Evie.” Michio glanced over his shoulder at Roark, who gave a swift nod and glued his back to mine.
Behind me, a glowing figure darted from the front line. Roark broke away from my embrace in a flash of steel. A head rolled. Then another.
The vigor powering my command dimmed and my vision went with it. My limbs turned to cement and I sagged against Michio. His arm looped back to catch me. The band around us wavered.
Roark returned to my back in a rise and fall of muscle. We gained a few more steps. Points of skin contact came and went. A fleeting grip. A brush of fingers. I pulled energy when and where I could, gathered it into myself, and released it with everything I had. Leave.
The aphids faltered, allowing a reprieve to run. The swoosh of the sword led the way. Michio’s stick snapped through the air unheard and with a long reach, fending off those closest on our heels.
Blinking sweat from my eyes, I held the knives at my sides and clamped down on the network of threads heating under the passage of my commands. Their numbers grew. Too many were gaining too close.
Our feet slapped across the quadrangle. A swarm rose up from the side. I released a blade and missed. “Michio, watch out.” My teeth sawed my lip and I tasted blood.
A chain whipped out from the end of his cane and disabled a row of double-jointed legs.
“Behind you.” His tone was calm, at odds with the fierce movement of his arms.
I spun, swapping the knives in my hands, double-fisting, and collided them into both sides of the bulbous head crashing into me. My back hit the bricks and my heartbeat screamed.
Eerie shrieks ripped through the night. The pit of bugs squeezed in.
Arms gripped me, lifted me over a bare shoulder. My energy spilled out, tendrils elongating, skirting the tubular suckers, the snapping pincers, and the hunched torsos. The web spread, ensnared everything in its path. My muscles trembled under the exertion.
Aphids invaded from all directions, flooding my horizon with green. I sucked in a jagged breath. “How far to the exit?”
“Ten paces.” Michio’s voice vibrated beneath me.
I pictured the arched stairway, the freedom beyond. Then I poured out my essence. My body fought it. My mouth watered, imbued with acid. Move.
The crowd of creatures divided, opened a path. The bricks ran together under my hanging feet. An inner agitation tore along my spine. The pain rippled up, bowed my back. The stone archway passed overhead and blocked out the floating crescent in the sky.
“Evie? Evie?” The voice faded. The arch tilted.
Brine teased my nose. I opened my eyes. “Did I pass out?”
“Where to?” Michio shouted.
My waist bounced on his shoulder, arms lolling down his back. Sea breeze whipped my hair as he glided through the dark.
“The boreen. There,” Roark said, winded.
Sand sprayed under Michio’s feet as he reeled in a circle. A narrow path flickered by. Water slapped at a huge boat docked at the end.
Michio grunted and jerked to the side. His body flowed through the swing of his free arm. A meaty smack followed. When he whirled again, I craned my neck. A sea of green stretched to the horizon. Driveling mouths struck at our heels.
A long-necked bird winged into the night and rose above the aphids. Its white plumage glistened as if absorbing their glow. Convenient that it was there. I couldn’t command it, having no connection with it. But I could command the aphids to follow it.
The wings snapped, soaring, taking it away. I focused on it, fed my energy into the image of it. Follow.
Waves of light rippled through the predators. Their virescent bodies turned as one, climbing over each other, chasing the feathered star.
Follow, I pushed. Spasms seized my muscles. So many frenzied threads. Too many to command. My tongue flopped between stabbing teeth. My stomach heaved.
Michio’s arm clenched around me and the ground blurred under his feet. An engine rumbled.
“Did it work?” I slurred. “Are they following it?”
“Get her on the boat,” an unfamiliar voice shouted. “We’re pushing off.”
“J-J…see.” What was wrong with my speech? Roark voiced what I couldn’t. “The Lakota.”
Multiple footsteps pounded the ramp.
“Didn’t make it.” Michio’s lips brushed my cheek. “You were amazing back there, Evie. Just hang on.”
No. No. No. My screams didn’t escape the convulsions in my throat.
“My bag.” He shifted me in his arms. “Out of my way, Roark. She’s seizing.”
Our bodies lurched against the sudden motion beneath us. Sandalwood mingled with a mist of salt and algae. Michio’s chest bolstered the battering contractions.
The jade of Roark’s worried eyes blinked in and out of my vision. His trembling hands cupped my face. “Bloody hell. Do something.”
The wind stilled. The tide hushed. Amidst the darkness, the perfect light carried my body and my soul.
Reason is our soul’s left hand, faith her right.
John Donne
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: REASON
I woke to a sharp prick on my lip, the slide of thread tugging at the hurt.
“Aiman’s fist,” Michio whispered.
“And the one above her eye?” Roark’s brogue was tight, his arm a heavy drape on my waist.
“The same.”
The arm around me hardened. “I want to beat the bag outta him.”
Silence. Then Michio shifted, followed by the creak of leather and slide of zippers. “That’s the last of her old stitches.” His hushed voice followed his retreating footsteps.
Roark’s fingers perused my body. The lump on my head. The cuts and bumps on my face. The wound on my palm. “They put her through hell.”
A tired sigh. “She held her own.”
There was too much regret in their voices. Time to move on. I dragged my eyes open. Jade ones stared back. His were alert and so very green. I smiled into them. “I’ve been awake for a while.”
Honey-tinged strands curled around the sharp angles of his freckled cheeks. “I know it. Ye have this adorable habit of wigglin’ your Indian joes when ye wake.”
“My what?”
His chuckle brought me home. “Your toes, lass. Ye wiggle your clever toes.”
Said toes explored the legs intertwined with mine. Ah God, I missed him. I missed this, my hand reaching, strolling along his jaw. My arm wobbled, dropped to the bed. “Where’s Jesse?”
“How do you feel?” Michio leaned against a rich veneered cabinet, which hovered over bench seats and more cabinets. Candlelight danced across his severe expression. “Any pain?”
I rubbed my eyes with a finger and thumb and rolled to my back. “I feel numb at the moment.”
The double bed I shared with Roark engulfed half of the windowless room. Two oval doors crowded one wall. Clothes swayed from hooks in the ceiling.
Roark pillowed his face on his bicep and regarded me from under hooded eyes. “We’re in the stateroom aft of the yacht, love.”
There was that beautiful smile. The smile I thought I’d never see again. I touched the turned up corners. “Missed you.”