by Pam Godwin
I leaned back. “Fear?”
“Panic. Dread. Afraid-of-the-dark-and-crying-for-my-momma terror.”
I shook my head, scrunching my brows. No way was he afraid of me. Hell, this man wasn’t afraid of anything.
He toyed with the ends of my hair where it lay across my chest. “When I look at you, I see you trapped in a spider sac, your blood sucked dry, your life…” His fingers squeezed around the wet strands, his voice hollow. “Gone. Then I see you pregnant, the child in your womb clawing its way out, and you’re bleeding and limp and…”
“Okay. It’s okay.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled his head to my chest, my fingers lost in his hair.
So the deaths of our friends had made the prophecy more real for him? Fuck, why hadn’t he just told me that?
“Did you think ignoring me or treating me like shit would make me go away? That it would make your fears go away?”
Footsteps splashed behind me with all the gracefulness of Roark’s heavy-booted approach.
Jesse dragged in a breath and exhaled thickly against my chest, his arms hugging my back. “No, Jesus. I’d never want you to go away. I just…I don’t know. It’s easier to harden a hurting heart, to force it back into its vault.”
Easier for him, but fucking hell on me. “You have to talk to me, Jesse. You can’t shut me out or throw me away.”
“He’s working on that.” Roark crouched beside us, positioning his body to keep an eye on Shea and Darwin upstream.
“He’s working on it with you.” I leaned back so I could peer into Jesse’s eyes. “Why him and not me?”
A look of confusion drew across Jesse’s expression. “Maybe because he doesn’t fling knives at my head.”
I huffed. “No, he just threatens to beat you until diarrhea leaks from your ass.”
Jesse’s mouth lifted with a small smile as he traced the lines of my lips with a wet finger. I didn’t know it until that moment how much I needed that affection. The gesture in his touch filled my chest with warmth, expanding it, healing the hurt inside it.
“He needed some distance,” Roark said, “to set things straight in his head.” His eyes cut to Jesse. “Though ye made a right balls of it, lad.”
Jesse’s lips flattened, twitched. “Let’s leave my balls out of it.”
Roark scratched his jaw and arched an eyebrow. “Want a go a’ mine then, do ye?”
“No.” Jesse pinched the bridge of his nose. “Definitely not.”
“Ye should, because you’re gonna need a whole fecking bag of balls.”
Seriously with the balls talk? I was straddled on Jesse’s lap, surrounded by a rippling landscape of bare-chested muscles. Show a girl some mercy. “Why does Jesse need a bag of balls?”
Roark cocked his head. “To work himself up to a man-sized apology for being such a squirrel-faced cunt.”
“Squirrel-faced?” That was a new one. I searched the brutal angles of Jesse’s very un-squirrel-like features.
“Aye.” Roark rolled a shoulder. “His nuts are currently lodged in the vicinity of his cheeks.”
I couldn’t stifle my grin as I glanced between Jesse’s scowl and Roark’s wide smile. “Jesse doesn’t do apologies.”
It was a Lakota thing. If a mistake was made, they simply said Wanunhecun. Loosely translated: Oops.
But Jesse didn’t utter that word. Instead, he studied me with a strikingly raw expression, his lips parted, and his copper eyes burning bright, communicating so much in that single look. Then he punctuated it with his hands in my hair, his mouth locked onto mine, and his tongue pushing past my lips.
I grabbed his shoulders and clenched my thighs around his waist, knocked off balance and instantly aroused. He apologized with the roll of his tongue and the slide of his lips, his kiss so thorough and intense I felt it in every inch of my body, breaking me apart and making me whole again.
His skin slipped hot and smooth beneath my fingers, his body hard as stone between my legs. I was fully aware Roark was right there, watching, but the urge to rock against Jesse’s pelvis, to forgive him completely and passionately, outweighed my inhibition. Besides, Roark said he liked to watch, and knowing that only turned me on more.
Roark climbed to his feet. “When you’re done apologizing to her tonsils, help me catch some fish, will ye? I’m about to gnaw me own fecking arm off here.”
Jesse smiled against my mouth, breaking the kiss. “That guy…” He shook his head.
Yeah. That guy. Roark towered over us, regarding our embrace with something like contentment glimmering in his eyes. I wasn’t sure I’d ever figure out his role in my relationships, but one thing was certain. He wanted us to be happy. The three of us, if there were such a thing. Or the four of us, if I were willing to stab myself with the slowly deteriorating, rusted prong of hope.
I unfolded my limbs and stood, making my way back to Shea. Halfway there, a sudden charge of energy slammed into my stomach. I buckled over, breathing through it, and angled my head to make sure Shea and Darwin were still in the stream.
“Don’t leave the water,” I shouted, my mind coiling around the invisible threads, counting them. “Fifteen aphids. East side.”
Without hesitation, Shea raised the bow, seated an arrow, and moved into anchor position.
I watched her carefully for a moment, studying her expression for discomfort. “Do you feel them? The aphids?”
She shook her head, her attention on the treed shoreline. It was unfortunate she hadn’t picked up the internal aphid sensory from me. It would’ve been an extraordinary defense mechanism to pass along to cured women.
Jesse handed me my bow and pecked a kiss on my temple. “You can do this, darlin’.”
He waded upstream to stand beside Shea. Darwin was already on point, his ear pinned back against his head, his back and shoulders barely breaching the rolling water.
Our packs lined the shore on the west side, my carbine and handgun there, just a useless pile of metal without ammo. If we needed to run, at least we could grab our food.
Roark arched a brow at me, and I raised mine in challenge. Oh sure, I could do this without bullets. Ha! Worst case, I could hug the closest guy and telepathically command the aphids into the stream and let the water kill them.
A few minutes later, the four of us stood in a line, three anchored arrows and one raised sword.
The breeze brushed past my nose, carrying with it the scent of rot. Beside me, Darwin raised his hackles, his body silent and still in the water. Not even a growl. He’d learned over the years not to announce his location.
Now if only he would stay put when the aphids arrived.
I delivered my command for him to stay with a stern whisper. “Bleib.”
Then we waited. It felt like an eternity as we watched for movement in the trees, listening for the rustle of foliage and the hissing snarls of wet mouths. I could sense their approach like claws scraping the lining of my stomach, but when they finally emerged, it wasn’t with a monstrous explosion from the forest.
Fifteen aphids slipped silently and lightning fast along the shoreline. A terrifying sight if we had been standing anywhere else but in the water.
“They’re getting smarter.” Jesse wrinkled his forehead. “But they’re still allergic to water.”
Thank fuck for that. We held our positions and released our arrows into the horde. Roark swept to the edge, taking down the braver bugs that swung their bulbous heads close to the shore.
My aim with the bow was still shit, and as I reached for each arrow from the quiver on my back, I wondered if I’d run out before the last aphid fell. I wondered how many aphids prowled the planet, and how many arrows it would take to even make a dent in their numbers.
There were about seven billion people when the aphid plague hit, spread across seven continents. How many mutated? How many men were still mutating, perishing beneath the aphids’ evolving intelligence? How many humans were we losing every day?
As far
as battles went, this one ended quicker than most, thanks to the protection of the stream and the bugs’ hungry drive to get to us but not hungry enough to dive into the water to collect their food. The skin on my index finger burned from the friction of the arrows as I nocked another one and scanned the shore.
Fifteen scaly green bodies covered the ground, a few missing heads, the rest prickling with arrows.
I lowered the bow and ran my hand through Darwin’s dense fur. He licked my fingers then bounded out of the stream, circling and sniffing through the carnage.
“Hot damn.” Shea bumped a shoulder against mine. “Bona-fide warrior princesses for the win. I’m ready to do that again.”
I laughed, delighted with the excitement brightening her face, and dared a peek at Jesse. The quiver on his back was completely full. What on Earth?
He caught my eyes and grinned. “I didn’t want to dirty my arrows unless I had to. That was all you, ladies.” He glanced at the few detached heads. “And Roark.”
I reassessed the gory shoreline. The majority of the arrows hung from some part of a mutated body.
“Most of those are yours, Shea.” I was certain I’d only hit a couple bugs.
And so it went. As the days and nights slipped by, we slowly made our way down the mountain, sticking to the stream, practicing with our bows, and testing our new skill on the dozens of aphids we encountered.
Jesse taught us how to make arrows, and I stayed on his ass about using his words. It wasn’t a walk in the park by any stretch of the imagination. The days were blistering and long, the aphids persistent, and the hike perilously steep. I was forced to shed the weight of my carbine and handgun. Jesse and Roark left bulky supplies along the trail as well. Canned foods, extra water, and the ultrasound machine. The latter was the most difficult to let go.
But the evenings were the hardest. The four of us huddled together, in the shadows, next to the stream, relying on Darwin’s nose and my internal sensor to alert us of aphids.
Beyond the usual dangers and the torment of insomnia, nightfall brought another kind of torture. The proximity of our bodies pressed together, mine sandwiched between Jesse and Roark, produced an agonizing tension. Tension in the form of not one but two erections prodding at my body.
Sexual frustration smothered our bedrolls. If Shea had inherited even a fraction of my libido, she would’ve been miserable too, sleeping at Roark’s back night after night. But she was smart enough to never try anything with my guardians, and I thanked her by not messing around in front of her. Without privacy, there was no fooling around, no self-pleasure, and definitely no sex. Not while guarding Shea. And honoring a vow. And avoiding pregnancy.
Yeah, I dreaded the evenings. We all did.
But a month later, we walked out of the mountains, physically healed and emotionally on our way to better.
As we footed south along Route 220, the days shortened and the nights grew cooler. Shea and I had gained confidence with our bows, but we were only four people strong. We needed more guards. We needed to find nymphs. We needed transportation and food and shelter.
We needed to ensure we didn’t lose another woman the way we’d lost Elaine.
On the third night on Route 220, we bedded down in an abandoned house.
The night that changed everything.
The sound of scratching came to me in a dream. It wanted in, pushing at the edges of my mind and clawing along the exterior of the house. Sharp and menacing. Insistent and desperate. In that hazy stasis between slumber and awareness, I answered instinctively.
Come in.
Vibrations coiled around my spine and whipped through my stomach like live wires, wild and raging and singeing my insides with electrical sparks. I wrapped phantom arms around the sensation, the impulse to soothe it as natural as drawing air. This was what I was born to do.
This? What the hell was this?
My eyes snapped open, and my senses powered up as I peered into the darkness of the room. But my internal sensor was quiet, and deafening silence rang in my ears.
The hairs on my arms stood on end as I waited, muscles locked, everything narrowing to the sound of…nothing.
There were three bedrooms upstairs, but after we’d nailed pieces of furniture to the ground floor entry points, we opted to sleep in the living room near the front door. I lay half-on, half-off Roark’s chest on a musty couch. Jesse and Darwin shared the rug on the floor. Shea took the recliner.
I couldn’t make out their forms in the dark, but the steady pacing of their breaths told me they hadn’t woken. Even Darwin was snoring lightly.
Weird. Maybe the scratching was all in my head? I focused inwardly, searching for the magnetic charge I felt moments ago.
A ruthless quake shivered through me, cutting off my air, accompanied by the faint sound of clawing against the rear of the house. The front window rattled. The wind? The house settling? Or was there more than one thing out there?
What kind of thing? I couldn’t trace any links to aphids. Couldn’t hear their distant growls. If it were the Drone, wouldn’t I have felt a deathly sort of warning? Could it be Michio?
Maybe Michio, but my recognition of his presence would’ve been automatic, right? Unless he'd changed even more than he had when he left?
Something sharp rubbed along the outside walls and scraped over a window in the rear. It circled both sides of the house, everywhere all at once, patient and deliberate, as if searching for a way in.
I listened hard to identify the timing and placement of the scratches. Whatever was out there was either circling with inhuman speed or there was more than one of them. I swallowed around my hammering pulse, my stomach twisting in on itself.
The scratching ceased and took my breath with it.
Abrupt silence was the worst. It was worse than the reverberations of hungry snarls chasing me in the woods. Worse than the gurgling screams of humans amid mutation. Worse than the rip of clothing and the creak of rope when men took my body without permission.
It was silence. Which could be nothing. Or something. A trap. A deceptive relief.
I breathed quietly, my muscles stiff against Roark’s. Then I felt it. The soundless echo of pain, creeping over me like a frigid whisper. A summons without words. A conjuring.
My bones turned to ice, and my nails dug into my palms. Could it—they—break in?
A voice in my head said, Let them.
My voice. Against all logic, the compulsion to open the front door sent me scrambling to my knees. One hand landed on the back of a couch, the other on the warm skin of Roark’s chest, grounding me. But my attention locked on the vicinity of the door, its location blackened by shadows.
The cushions bounced under my legs. Roark sat up, and his arms encircled my hips, every muscle in his body taut and alert beneath me. “Wha’ is it?”
My fingers found his mouth in the dark and covered his parted lips. I concentrated on the energy circulating through my insides, trying to make sense of the chaotic sparks. Each stinging transmission felt like liquid ice piercing my veins, spreading to my limbs and producing a cold ache in my joints.
Whatever this was wasn’t aphid. It was too shivery, too pleading, too emotional. It was ice-cold sadness.
My heart skipped. Was it Michio? A nymph? One of the Drone’s tricks?
I released Roark’s mouth and reached for the floor, my fingers finding and gripping a muscled shoulder.
Shaking it harshly, I whispered, “Jesse, wake up.”
In an instant, he stood, flashlight in hand, and aimed a beam of light at the circular tabletop we’d nailed to the front door’s frame. Table legs and cabinet doors barred the windows on either side.
He swung the beam to the recliner, spotlighting Shea’s fuzzy head. She shielded her eyes against the glow and bunched her shoulders up around her ears. Darwin stood beside her, head cocked, his body low to the floor and frozen in readiness. They knew the drill. Don’t make a noise. Wait for orders.
A
thump rattled the front door, followed by the sound of a keen edge scoring wood. It dragged over the handle, wobbling it, then continued on, creaking across the wood siding and pausing at the window barred with table legs. My blood ran cold, and a shiver gripped my body.
It stood at the window. Glass, wooden bars, and a handful of nails wouldn’t stop the blast of a shotgun, or a hungry aphid, or a monster with wings. But whatever waited on the other side seemed content with a psychological attack as it tap-tap-tapped on the pane.
Jesse flicked off the flashlight, and the rasps of our breaths clotted the sudden darkness. My eyes adjusted, squinting at the window and whatever stood on the other side.
Dimly backlit by the moon, a human form took shape on the porch. Bony shoulders, stringy hair, and cavernous stare of vacancy peered back through the crisscross of table legs.
Unless Michio had lost a foot of height, it wasn’t him. The icy tremors inside me agreed. My entire body throbbed with gnawing prickles, growing colder by the second in my aching need to reach this creature.
Because it wasn’t just any creature. It was exactly what I’d been searching for, and it was here, not because I found it. It found me.
My heart kicked up. “It’s a nymph.”
Were there more? I’d heard multiple scratching sounds, hadn’t I?
I wrestled free of Roark’s hold and leapt from the couch, headed for the window. “There’s a nymph on our fucking doorstep.”
I couldn’t believe it, even though every twitch and pinch inside me said it was true.
Jesse grabbed my arm and yanked me backward. “Where the hell are you going?”
The tapping against glass grew louder, more urgent. Blood barreled through my veins, rushing toward my heart and chilling my extremities. Go to it. Go to it. Go to it.
Why was I panicking? Or was the nymph projecting its panic onto me?
What if it ran before I could remove all the boards? It needed my blood, and my body knew this, every inch of me attuned to its movements, heartbeat, and sentience.
I could feel the glass beneath its talons, hear the stirring in the woods behind its body, and smell my blood through its nostrils. The scent rolling into the nymph’s lungs was so heady and intoxicating I let out a cry of anguish.