by Pam Godwin
“Eveline.”
I jumped at the frighteningly familiar whisper, and the cigarillo hit the water with a hiss. My sharp exhales rose in the air, my muscles locked in shock.
That voice… He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s dead.
Wasn’t he?
I never saw a body.
Because the lava would’ve disintegrated it.
I listened hard, my gaze jumping from shadow to shadow. I was just hearing things. Crazy, overactive nerves.
The surface of the pond rippled away from the far shore as if something had slipped in.
My chest hitched. But nothing was there.
The breeze again.
I focused on the wind but couldn’t feel it. Not a damned thing moved. But I sensed something. Something slick and oily slithering behind me.
My heart bolted in fear. Paralyzing fear, the kind that freezes the lungs and shivers breaths along the spine. I was stuck in an unblinking, wheezing, high-alert stance.
The air was deadly still, yet the sound of flapping fabric drifted over my shoulder.
The hairs on my neck stiffened, begging me not to turn around. If it was an aphid, the water protected me. But I’d heard that accented whisper, the unforgettable flap of a cape. I could feel his oily presence.
My pulse raced as I slowly turned my head and looked over my shoulder.
The muscles in my neck strained and stiffened as I stared over my shoulder, my fingers tensing in the water around my hips.
The silhouette on the shore stole my breath, every ounce of it. The dark outline of a man was cut out of the black backdrop, his features cloaked by the hood of the cape. But I didn’t need to see the face to identify the source of my two-year nightmare.
My body went cold, and my stomach caved in. I spun to face him, my panic escaping in a piercing shout. “Jesse!”
This wasn’t real. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t. The Drone was dead. Which meant I’d been pulled into the spirit world. Jesse should’ve heard me. He’d promised to guard my mind, to make sure I’d always find a way back to the living.
The looming shadow reached up and slid back the hood. My backbone began to buckle. One by one, the bones of my vertebrae crumbled as a mutilated face came into view. I hurdled into nightmares, reliving the threat of fangs. The snap of demonic wings. The pungency of sulfur. The lava river engulfing the Drone’s fall. Bend, bulge, collapse. My spine melted, and water washed over my shoulders.
I wasn’t dreaming. My body pulsed with wakefulness, shivering beneath the warm water. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t stuck in the spirit world.
With a monster.
I couldn’t pull my gaze from the disfigurement. From hairline to collar, his cheeks and jaw drooped with loose, melted flesh, the skin beneath his black eyes sagging hideously.
He prowled closer, the sable ringlets of his hair snaking around his cloak-covered chest. “You look healthy, Eveline. I’m very pleased.”
Unable to move, unable to come to terms with what I was seeing, I shouted again. “Jesse!”
The Drone’s laughter erupted around me just as the visceral hum of aphids annihilated my insides. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. Was Jesse fighting them off? A telepathic battle writhed in my stomach. With the pinch of each aphid death, more moved in.
But the tree line remained comatose. Where had Jesse run off to? Could all this be happening in my mind? Maybe he couldn’t hear me screaming because I was stuck in some other dimension? My muscles trembled to find him, and my hand shot to my forearm, releasing a blade.
With a steely breath, I aimed it at the Drone’s chest and sent it hurdling across the distance.
He blurred to the side. If I blinked, I would’ve missed the movement. But I hadn’t blinked, and I still missed him by a fucking foot. Goddammit, I wanted to see him bleed, to see if he could bleed.
I went for another blade and threw again. It hit the loose folds of his cape, and I swear I heard a rip in the fabric before it vanished in the tall grass behind him.
I kept throwing. He kept dodging. My fingers flexed in frustration, my breath sharpening. I wasn’t far from the shore. I should’ve hit him at least once.
Dead or alive, he still had more power than me, to outmaneuver my attacks, to laugh in my face with each failure. Which he did, his demented enjoyment crackling through the air.
I reached for the next blade and… Fuck!
I’d run out. My blades scattered the shore, kicked away by the Drone’s boots. Could ghosts do that? His feet should’ve floated through the steel.
Where the hell was Jesse? The animal clinic was too far away to alert Roark, the cinder-block walls too thick to penetrate. But I tried anyway. “Roark!”
The area surrounding the building held still.
The Drone crossed his arms, and a terrifying smile morphed his mouth into fangs, melted skin, and insanity.
The thought of Jesse alone and in need of help flooded my blood with adrenaline. My heart rate blew up, and vicious energy surged through my body. Should I leave the protection of the water without weapons?
It wasn’t just my life I risked. The cure. The future child.
Where were the others? Still guarding the perimeter?
“Georges! Tallis!” I bellowed their names until my throat burned, pausing every few breaths to listen for the boom of their rifles.
More silence. Where were the aphids? Their vibrations strummed from… I couldn’t locate a position. The threads buzzed from everywhere and nowhere.
I concentrated hard and tried to reign them in, pushing my command along each insectile lifeline with urgency. Leave. Leave. Leave.
The effort sucked me dry in seconds. Without masculine energy from skin contact, I was powerless. Spots invaded my vision. Ice spread through my veins. And wet warmth trickled from my nose, followed by the scent of copper.
“You’re wasting your time.” The Drone’s voice drew my attention, his mouth twisting against his mangled cheek. “You can’t control them.”
Because he could override my control, even when I was fueled by Yang. He could also scramble the signals. He had created the mutations after all.
My chest collapsed with helplessness, and the heave of my breaths shook my body. I ducked my face beneath the surface to wake the fuck up. But when I blinked at the shore, the monster was still there.
I swiped at the blood tickling my lip. “What do you want, Aiman?”
“The Drone.” Fangs glistened, so much longer and pointier than I remembered. “Address me by my title.”
He’s a phantom. A harmless, residual puff of nothingness. I armored myself with that thought and stood to my full height.
Water rushed off my body, and the surface lapped at my hips. “I’ll address you however I want. You’re dead.”
His eyes blackened, as dense and dark as his cloak. “Am I?”
A goddamned volcano had swallowed him. Apparently, ghosts couldn’t grasp the fact that they were dead. My children’s apparitions never seemed aware of it.
I gestured to the stagnant stillness around us. “We’re in the spirit world, asshole. Which means you’re just a fog of hateful energy and neurotic memories.”
So why wasn’t he transparent like Annie and Aaron? I inched forward until a few yards separated us.
His chest and shoulders were broad and solid, standing a few inches taller than six feet. The toe of his boot peeked from beneath the cape, firmly planted on the dirt, indenting it and leaving a footprint.
He didn’t have to be floaty and airy, but it certainly would’ve eased my wildly beating heart. Could he have survived that fall? I never actually saw his body hit the lava.
“You look confused, Eveline, but I think you know what is real and what is…spirit.” His Arabic inflection tumbled out with sophistication despite the mouthful of teeth. “Besides, you and I have a connection that defies all rules.”
“There is no you and I.”
And he was an illusion.
Maybe Jesse was okay. Maybe the aphid sensations in my gut were illusions, too.
In the distance, a toad croaked. A toad? Couldn’t be. Whenever I crossed over to never-never-land, the ripple of life vanished.
But that wasn’t true, was it? Aaron told me once I could bring life with me.
My fingernails dug like knives in my palms as I willed myself back to reality. Silence cocooned the landscape, my heartbeat the only sound as it rushed past my ears. “Why am I here?”
“I am here because I’ve grown tired of waiting.”
Though I stood as tall as possible in the pond, my insides shrunk with dread. “Waiting for what?”
“We want the same thing,” he said, matter-of-factly.
My lungs constricted. “And what is that exactly?”
“We both want nymphs.”
When the Drone was alive, he’d twisted his religious beliefs beyond sanity and massacred the human race in the name of Allah. He used nymphs to breed a perfect, Drone-serving species. Obviously, we didn’t want nymphs for the same reason, and evidently, death hadn’t cured his madness.
Sliding footsteps marked his approach, pausing when the hem of his cape touched the water.
Then it dawned on me. He’d never fully escaped his aphid mutation, which meant he couldn’t enter the pond. I splashed, splaying my hands and directing waves of water as I rushed forward. He backed up, the hem of the cloak sloshing over the dirt.
Shadows swelled behind him, taking the form of hard, shell-like wings.
Oh shit. Not good. I stumbled backward, dipping lower in the water.
The black holes of his eyes impossibly darkened. “How is Dr. Nealy’s health?” He dragged his tongue over one fang. “Any new cravings?”
Had he bitten Michio as part of some plan? Fury blasted through my body, inflaming my face.
I charged forward, splashing frantically. “It must suck knowing your life’s work is so easily washed away with a drop of my blood.”
And now I had a new weapon. Trustworthy or not, Michio was stronger, healthier, maybe even invincible. No one could stop us from reversing the nymph mutation. That thought fueled my stupid courage as I continued to spray water at the retreating shadow.
His wings snapped out, shooting him skyward like a bullet in the night. His godawful roar followed him as he swooped back down, his melted face warping in rage.
I dropped to my ass, sinking into the water until the surface submerged my chin. He can’t hurt me. He can’t hurt me.
His claw swung out, and a cold painful smack slammed into my face, hurling me into blackness.
My body spiraled in a sea of black, and suffocating terror washed over my face. I wanted to draw air, but I was submerged beneath water. My legs and arms flailed, connecting with nothing, falling…
The Drone. His wings in the sky. The claw in my face. Was he hovering above the surface? Waiting for me to come up?
The pebbly bottom bumped against my back. I swallowed my breath, and sharp pains stabbed through my chest. Need air. But I was safe here. For now. How much longer could I stay underwater?
Not long. My lungs burned, reaching capacity, and panic squeezed my insides.
I kicked until my face breached the surface. Gulping for each inhale, I gasped and choked while scanning the sky and shore, blinking rapidly to clear my vision.
The Drone wasn’t there.
Water splashed at my back. My heart stopped. I wasn’t alone? The splashing grew dizzyingly closer. Before I could turn around, arms came around my waist from behind. I was seconds from swinging a punch, but the moment of fear gave way to the soothing warmth of a familiar body.
“Evie. Shhh.” Jesse’s voice wrapped around me in soft, raspy echoes. “You’re okay.”
I clutched the arms around my waist as a wave of questions rushed up my throat and poured out in waterlogged chokes.
He hugged me tighter and rubbed a hand over my spine. “Cough it out. There you go.”
After a few more wheezing spasms, I managed a quiet breath. “Did you see him?”
“Who?” He twisted me around and pulled me up against the wall of his bare chest, his hands clenching against my head and back. “I saw…” His chin tilted up, eyes on the sky. “I don’t know. A huge fucking stork?”
Definitely not a stork. Did that mean the Drone was alive? Was he still here? I clung to Jesse’s neck, shoving my arms beneath the bow and wrapping my legs around his thighs. I wasn’t wearing clothes, but he didn’t push me away. Instead, he moved a hand around my waist, holding my body against his, while the other cupped the side of my head.
His gaze landed on mine and widened. “Jesus, what happened to your face?” He swiped his thumb over my cheek.
I flinched. “The Drone. He was here.”
His expression blanked. “You crossed over?”
“He fucking hit me. How can a dead guy do that?”
I’d tried to make physical contact with Annie and Aaron once, but my fingers just waved through their airy forms.
“He can’t. Spirits are just lingering memories holding on. They can’t hurt you.” He padded around the swelling egg. “Not like this. You must have slipped, hit your face on a rock.”
His words didn’t match the horror creeping across his face.
“He flew at me, Jesse. With swinging claws.” I glared at him. “Claws he didn’t have when he died. And I didn’t mistake the punch across my face.” I sucked in a breath, knowing he needed a few moments to work through his denial. “Do you think—?”
“We watched him die.” His tone was low, his eyes hard as they darted up to the dusky expanse of sky.
“We watched him fall.”
I’d stabbed a knife in his chest as he stumbled backward into the canyon. Could he have flown out of sight and missed the lava? His face was burned, but his hair wasn’t singed. How was that possible?
Jesse glanced around, chewing on his lip. “Think about it. If he was really here, why would he leave?”
Even more perplexing, this place didn’t weird me out anymore. It was as if all the niggling feels had vanished with the Drone. But that was beside the point. Jesse still didn’t believe me.
I pulled in a slow breath, which did little to calm my irritation. “I’m naked in a pond, coughing up water with a goose-egg on my cheek from my mortal enemy who’s supposed to be dead.” I jerked my arms out, wobbling in his hold. “And the guy who was supposed to be guarding me thinks I imagined the whole thing.”
“Hey.” He wrestled my arms back to my sides. “Stop. I believe you, okay?”
Hugging me closer, he rested his chin on my shoulder. I was spectacularly aware of every heated point of contact with him. His hands on my head and waist. My breasts pressed against his chest. My ankles hooked beneath the wet denim on his ass. My body hummed with sensory overload.
He had held me in similar bare-chested positions before but always with a purpose. To fuel my control over aphids. To ward off my nightmares. This though… This was different. I didn’t want him to let me go, and evidently, neither did he.
His arms wrapped tighter around my back.
I rested my head on the hard flex of his shoulder. “I felt aphids when you disappeared. What happened?”
“They slipped past the perimeter Georges and Tallis had set up. Too many to count. I was trying to lead them away from you.” He kneaded strong fingers along the crook of my neck. “They’re getting smarter. More methodical.”
Or the Drone was directing them, telling them how to move under our radar, to surprise Jesse. To kill him. I bit down on a shivering breath.
He lowered his brow, settling it against my shoulder. “I heard you screaming my name. I couldn’t break away.”
The guilt in his voice produced a pang in my chest. “I shouldn’t have distracted you.” A reminder that the buzzing inside me from earlier was gone. “You killed them all?”
The quiver on his back was half-empty, and
the arrows he’d recovered dripped with black blood. And not once did I hear gunfire.
My eyes widened. “What about Georges and Tallis?”
“They’re fine, patrolling nearby and making sure I didn’t miss any.” He sighed against my shoulder. “Thank you for not leaving the pond.” His chuckle huffed out, short and strained. “I was convinced you were going to come crashing through the woods, naked and unarmed, and get yourself killed.”
“I thought about it.”
I ran my nose along the pulsing vein at his neck. The action felt…normal. Even our surroundings, the pond, the gloomy skyline, all of it felt normal.
After a period of silence, he trailed fingers over the swell on my cheek. “The Drone didn’t enter the water?”
“No. He backtracked when I splashed him.”
“Then we know his weakness.”
“The safest place in the world is in the water,” I mumbled, absently, eyes on the sky. “Fuck, Jesse. He’s alive.”
“We’ll get him again, and this time we’ll cut him up and burn the pieces.” He dragged his whiskered jaw from my brow to my temple. Man, that felt nice. Even better was his warm breath on my face. “When we’re done with this road trip, let’s retire on a boat.”
“Deal.”
But could I even hope for such a thing? I just needed to cure every nymph on the planet. Survive a fall from a cliff. Gather enough supplies to live offshore. Evade pregnancy, possibly dooming the human race in the process. Oh, and kill the Drone. Again.
Heavy thoughts. I could tell by the sudden grooves in his forehead he was thinking the same things.
For now, I was content to stand in the protection of this pond, wrapped up in Jesse, for as long as he’d allow it. “You know that creepy feeling I had when we first came out here?”
“It’s gone.”
I leaned back for a better look at his face. “You felt it, too?”
“I feel you.” He shrugged. “You’re easy to read.”
It was more than that, like the man was attuned to my every thought. It made me feel naked, and not in the physical sense.