by Pam Godwin
“Georges caught movement in his long-range rifle scope.” Roark rubbed the back of his neck. “Lost sight of him when he jumped over the water.”
Could Michio jump that? The moat was at least fifteen feet across. An aphid couldn’t cross it. I spied a bridge on the far shore, but it lay on its side in pieces. And given the pungent smell of algae, I wasn’t keen on swimming through fetid black waters to search for him.
“Michio?” My voice echoed through the stale hush, bouncing against the walls of the cavernous habitat. “Are you there?”
“I don’t like this,” Jesse said, fitting an arrow to his bowstring.
I glanced at the tense pull of his face. “I hope you don’t intend to use that on him.”
He pressed his lips into a stubborn line then inhaled a long breath. “Doc! Get your ass out here.”
Without warning, a surge of energy spasmed through my insides. Restless and disoriented, it spun around my bones with nowhere to go. My knees buckled as I turned, stumbling backward against Roark’s chest.
“There’s an aphid.” I scanned the island, tracing the magnetic hum across the moat. Why hadn’t I felt it sooner? I could usually pick up their vibrations within fifty yards. My emotions must’ve been wreaking havoc on my senses. “It’s on the island.”
As the words left my mouth, a green glow skittered from the shadows on the other side of the trench. Its hunger hammered my belly from the inside out, wild and vicious, and more desperate than most.
Roark circled an arm around my waist, pulling my back closer to his chest. His other hand raised the sword before us. “Where?”
Unlike my guardians, my evolved eyesight enabled me to see aphids in the dark, illuminating them like radioactive glowworms. “Ten o’clock. It can’t jump the water, right?”
“We’re not chancing it.” Jesse trained the bow and let an arrow fly, but his aim was off by several yards. “Can’t fucking see it. Where, Evie?”
I slid a blade from my arm sheath. “To the left—”
Roark clicked on his flashlight, and the beam caught something stirring behind the iridescent bug. The movement drew my eyes, but that wasn’t all. I sensed it, a strange yet familiar presence, like a warm trickle through my veins.
“Wait.” I touched Jesse’s arm. “Don’t shoot.”
A man-shaped shadow launched from the rocks and tackled the aphid to the ground. The struggle ended as quickly as it began, and in the next breath, the humanoid head was wrenched halfway around with a fatal crack.
My chest collapsed in a relieved exhale. The attacker was too far away to make out his features, but I knew with certainty who he was. “Michio.”
He dropped the limp body, its glow extinguishing with its life. As he rose and stepped into the glare of Roark’s flashlight, he seemed bigger, more muscled, and seething with ferocity. It sharpened his cheekbones, set his brown eyes on fire, and graveled through his voice as he shouted across the moat. “Who did that to your face?”
The beam of light illuminated his features, but how the hell could he see mine?
Roark tucked the flashlight under his arm, cupped my jaw, and angled my cheek for a closer look. “The black and blue swelling is fecking pony, love. We need an explanation.”
This wasn’t the place or time I’d had in mind to tell him about the Drone, but the hard squint of his eyes meant I wouldn’t be able to put it off any longer.
I shifted out of his grasp, glanced at Michio, and slid my gaze away. Amid the milieu of looming shadows, the stench of blood, and the chilling glare of my fanged lover, no wonder my skin crawled with icy prickles. I didn’t feel the strange nothingness I’d sensed at the water hole, but that didn’t mean the Drone wasn’t watching us, his evil presence blanketed in darkness. Because evidently, dead or alive, he was hell-bent on haunting me.
Michio prowled to the water’s edge, a powerful mass of shirtless brawn. The gleam of Roark’s light followed Michio’s upper body, which stretched wider, tauter than normal, his posture radiating barely-leashed animosity. Maybe he looked more murderous because of the kill he’d just made with his bare hands. Or maybe it was a result of his changing DNA.
Regardless, he was still Michio, the territorial man I adored, and when his eyes imprisoned mine, the intense devotion reflecting there burned as bright as ever.
I returned my knife to its sheath, holding his gaze. “I had a run-in with Aiman Jabara.”
Michio’s fists locked at his sides, and sinews corded in his neck.
Roark shifted beside me. “The fuck face is dead.” He leaned around me, eyes on Jesse. “Tell me I’m right.”
Jesse kept his attention—and his arrow—aimed on Michio. “Can’t do that, Priest.”
Given the rigidness in Jesse’s posture, it was on the tip of my tongue to demand he point the weapon somewhere else. But could I guarantee Michio wouldn’t hurt them?
When it came to their safety, failure could not be accommodated or bargained with.
“As I live and breathe.” Roark dropped his head back and glared at the black arch of sky. “This day just keeps getting better and better.” Then he narrowed tired eyes at me. “Wha’ happened?”
Standing at the edge of the moat, three of us on one side, Michio on the other, I tried to ignore the fifteen-foot divide between us. A divide that felt increasingly like an enemy line.
I gave Roark a shaky smile, met Michio’s eyes, and told them about my encounter with Aiman.
Aiman and Michio had grown up together in Okinawa, their fathers stationed there in the U.S. Air Force. I could only imagine how hard this was for Michio. A childhood friend had turned into a genocidal monster, died at my hands, or fucking hell, maybe he didn’t, which meant we’d have to hunt him down and kill him again.
As I talked through the confrontation, the muscles in Michio’s face tightened in the glow of the flashlight, his chest twitching and stretching, the gunshot wound no longer visible. I lowered my eyes to his feet, which were planted shoulder-width apart, as if ready to fight.
I detailed the Drone’s fangs, the wings, and the words exchanged, my voice floating over the moat as I moved my gaze back up Michio’s body. Black pants hung loosely over long legs, the waistband dipping beneath the indented V of his hips. Carved abs rippled into defined pecs, the thick column of his neck powerfully still as he listened.
I dared to return to his eyes, which didn’t blink or waver from mine. “He came to me in dreams when he was alive. Maybe he can do the same in death?”
A hand gripped my arm, and Roark turned me to face him. “Hold on, love, for fuck's sake. You’re saying he had a face like a melted wheelie bin? And he couldn’t touch the water?” He removed his hand and swiped it roughly over his mouth. “Sounds like the knob licker survived.”
I pointed to the bump on my face. “Kinda felt that way.”
The stillness around us grew darker, deeper, and I wanted to leave all discussions of the Drone with the creepy shadows and whatever lurked within them.
I nodded at the dead bug behind Michio. “Your eyesight is evolving? You see their glow, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Michio crouched at the edge of the moat and splashed water over his forearms.
I flexed my fingers, unable to release the tension. “The water doesn’t hurt you?”
His head whipped to the side, as if to hide the snarl hissing past his clamped teeth. Then he nailed me with a furious look. “I’m not a mutant, Evie.”
With a long forced blink, I broke the intensity of his gaze. “You’re evolving.”
“We’re both evolving. I’m offended you think my changes are more repulsive than yours.”
Ouch. I gritted my teeth. “You’ve been infected by the Drone, Michio.”
“I’m not him!” he shouted, eyes blazing. Then he rose slowly, jaw set, his fingers scraping over his cropped hair. “I’m the same man you made love to four nights ago.”
Jesse flinched beside me, his raised arrow following Michio’s he
ad. I glanced at Roark and found him watching me with a squinty glare, the point of his sword digging against the concrete decking.
Why did I suddenly feel like I needed to defend myself? Michio and I had sneaked in a private moment on our last night in the mountains. They had to know, right? Michio was my lover. Didn’t mean he sucked my blood and turned me into…whatever he was.
Releasing a tight breath, I returned my attention to Michio’s disarming gaze. “What happens if you bite someone? Is the infection transferred through saliva? That’s how the Drone gave it to you, right?”
“It’s multifaceted.” His eyes hardened into brassy shards, swirling with too much goddamned intelligence. “I need time to validate my conclusions.”
It fucked with me how little I understood him, the way a nightmare fucked with me—from his unreadable expressions and elusive fighting techniques, to his exotic looks and naturally-toned physique. When I met him, he was dangerous and untrustworthy, but now…now that dangerous distrust was all wrapped up in messy feelings.
“What about sex? What if you transferred your infection when we—?”
“It’s not an infection!” His eyes flicked between Jesse and Roark. “Sheath your weapons.”
That wasn’t going to happen. And his reluctance to answer my questions only infuriated me. Just because he was stronger and faster and smarter, didn’t mean I was a pushover.
I couldn’t outfight him, but I could affect him with words. “You know why Jesse hasn’t slept with me?”
The arrow beside me wobbled as Jesse said in a growly tone, “Now is not the time.”
Roark rubbed his bare chest. “Nah, I think ye should keep going. Though I might need a garden full of Bushmills for this conversation.”
I had no idea how they would react to Annie’s warning. And maybe this wasn’t the right moment to disclose it, but I sensed something mounting in Michio. Not the same kind of sensation that connects me to aphids, but rather something dark and bitter slithering through the air around him, threatening to steal away the man I loved, the man who desperately wanted a child.
My chest felt like it was wrapped in rubber bands. “The night Jesse and I met, Annie told him how I would die.”
A noise rumbled in Roark’s throat, and Michio’s complexion paled in the ray of the flashlight. I kept talking, explaining each near-death encounter over the past two years, and how Jesse foresaw the order of events and where to intervene.
“That’s why you’ve been throwing her off a cliff?” Roark aimed a pointed look at Jesse.
Jesse nodded, stiffly. “The cliff is next.”
In a fluidity of swift movements, he swung the bow over his back, snatched the handgun from my thigh holster, and trained it on Michio. His arm must’ve grown tired from holding the stretched bow, but neither a bullet nor an arrow would stop Michio if it came to that.
Unless it hit his head? I shoved that painful image past my subconscious.
“Wha’ ye haven’t explained,” Roark said, his glare still locked on Jesse, “is why you’re pricking around, your pissflaps clearly itching with desire, when ye could be throwing it into her.”
I rubbed my forehead, exasperated. “Thank you, Roark, for phrasing that so gently.”
“We’re a bloody apocalypse past gentle, love.” He pressed a kiss on my temple and resumed glaring at Jesse.
“If she survives the cliff…” Jesse glanced at my stomach, his eyes shutting briefly and flicking back to Roark. “She’ll die from a pregnancy.”
Roark laughed, but it was strained and cut short. “Then we’ll glue our dicks to our fecking legs.”
This, coming from the celibate one. Guess that made him an expert on glued dicks.
“There’s more.” A muscle jerked in Jesse’s jaw, the gun in his hand resolutely aimed on Michio. “The aphids are evolving. Isn’t that right, Dr. Nealy?”
We were back to proper names? Not that Jesse and Michio had become best buds, but this was Jesse drawing a clear line of separation.
Michio cocked his head. His blank expression gave me nothing to go on, but his stance was tenser than I’d ever seen. If I had to guess, I’d say he was as scared as I was about his status in our group.
He cleared his throat. “The older mutations are adapting. I’ve been monitoring their progress since day one. Based on empirical evidence, the aphids are evolving in intelligence, physiology, and behavior.” He nodded over his shoulder at the dead bug. “When you were taking Evie’s blood, Amos told me he hadn’t fed this aphid since he trapped it on the island.”
My breath caught. “When did he trap it?”
“Two years ago.”
Two years without eating.
“Wha’ a fucking fuckhole.” Roark swung his bulky body into a furious pace along the moat. “An actual national fucking fuckhole. Bet they’d survive a nuclear blast, and do ye know why?” He pivoted back toward me, his eyes ten shades of frustrated. “Because they’re cockroaches. Clatty, freckly, sloppy-cunt cockroaches. It’s not even funny.”
Were there even enough bullets left in the world to wipe them all out?
I looked at Michio. “But nymphs can starve? Amos said he had to feed Shea to keep her from getting worse.”
Michio nodded.
“Evolving creatures,” Jesse said, “are why this prophesied pregnancy is troublesome.” In a monotone voice, he explained the final prediction, the child that could save the human race, his child, and the price of bringing her into the world. “This pregnancy would destroy the very reason we fight day after day, the only reason we continue to live.”
I closed my eyes against the severity of their gazes pressing against me. “I’m not the only reason—”
“You are,” Jesse said, simply.
A calloused finger traced the skin around my eyes until I opened them.
Roark stared back from inches away, worry lines spreading across his raw expression. "You really are, love."
A sharp twinge pinched my chest and stuttered my breath. “And you are mine.”
If the roles were reversed, I couldn’t fathom letting one of them die to save the faceless humans of future generations. The integrity and goodness in the men I loved was certain. I couldn’t say the same about the men this cruel world would breed going forward.
No one said a word as Jesse rehashed the validity of the prediction and the looming what-ifs he and I had already discussed.
When he finished, the silence dragged out for an eternity. It was more uncomfortable than I’d imagined it would be. Neither Roark nor Michio commented on Jesse’s conviction about the child being his. And they didn’t ask for my thoughts on the vision, which hovered somewhere between horror, confusion, and overwhelming indecision. In turn, I didn’t prod them to voice theirs. I wanted each of them to come to terms with this on his own.
Eventually, Roark broke the silence. “Not that it matters, seeing how I’ve only been sexually ravaged once in me life.” He slid me a smirk that quickly flattened into a sober line. “I’m infertile.”
“What? How?” I studied his pensive eyes and followed his gaze across the moat.
Michio stood tall and foreboding, like the rock structure behind him. “When he was imprisoned on Malta, I ran some tests on his sperm.”
My breath left me. “What the flipping fuck?”
“With my permission.” Roark squeezed my hip. “The good doctor made some valid points about ye being the only surviving woman amid the dwindling human race.” He shrugged. “So I splooged in a cup and let him poke around me clackers.”
“His sperm ducts are damaged,” Michio said. “Whether it’s genetic or a problem during development, his tubes cannot transport sperm.”
Was the flutter in my chest from relief? Or apprehension? Roark never expressed desire for kids, so this was an advantage for him, really. He could have me without worrying I’d get pregnant and die. That was, if he gave up the whole celibacy thing.
I shared a look with Jesse and knew he
was thinking the same thing.
Michio shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the murky water between us. “I don’t have the proper equipment to validate if my fertility has changed after the bite, but Tallis and Georges were able to find a home sperm test.”
The pharmacies might’ve been picked over, but it made sense that fertility products were left behind. But where was he going with this?
He looked up and met my eyes. “I used it on myself the last night we were in the mountains.”
“Why? Until now, you didn't know about the prediction. Yet you checked this a week ago?”
“I’m going through so many changes, I had to know.” He looked away, scanning the field at my back, then returned to me. “I had to know if I could still father a child.”
His guarded tone produced a cold sweat on my spine. He did this test after our argument about children.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. “And?”
“My sperm count is zero.” His voice dropped, low and pained. “An apparent effect of the bite.”
My heart constricted. Knowing how badly he wanted a child, a heavy pang swelled inside me, made worse by the physical distance between us. I ached to wrap my arms around him. “I’m so sorry.”
His chin dipped. “The home test is ninety-five percent accurate, but sperm count is only one factor in a man's fertility. I need to run more tests.”
“Fertile or not,” Jesse said, switching the gun to his other hand without lowering it, “you are not fucking her.”
Michio’s head snapped up, and two white points glimmered menacingly between his lips. “That’s Evie’s decision, not yours.”
“Some massive set of teeth ye got there.” Roark rolled back a shoulder, casual as can be, but I didn’t miss the tightening of his fingers as he dangled the sword. “Ye could eat a face through a fecking letterbox.”
“I would never harm her.” Michio remained as still as a statue.
My lungs burned as I breathed in the stifling atmosphere, the air thickening with the gravity of Roark’s and Michio’s infertility. It meant Jesse didn’t necessarily have supernatural baby-making genes. No, the startling revelation was, of my three guardians, he was the only one who could impregnate me. Just as Annie prophesied.