by Pam Godwin
Good grief. I must’ve been high on arousal and pheromones or something. A clear-headed, wide-awake, happy high. One that teased a million thoughts through my head.
I thought about the reason I’d left the mountains all those months ago. The hunt for nymphs. The spread of the cure. I wondered if Elaine was alive, and if any nymphs were following Shea and me now. I hadn’t sensed any since we left Virginia. Maybe because we were traveling on wheels, moving at a higher rate of speed, and never lingered in one place longer than a night.
Weighed down with those thoughts, I finally slept, but for the next three days, my energy levels rose to spectacular heights. We stopped frequently for fryer oil and more recruits, but the drive was no longer delayed by aphids. Each time I felt them, the impulse to mentally zap them became automatic. Vibration. Die. Repeat.
As Link led the caravan off the highway and down the main drag of my home town, my effusive high tapered. The chirrup of locusts, the perfume of lilac blooms, the narrow, macadam roads, the old railroad tracks, all of it hit me with an aching swell of nostalgia as my recollection of Grain Valley clashed with the abandoned ruins it had become.
I hadn’t been home in two years and four months, and a deep trembling panic sank into my bones, spreading out through my muscles and shivering my skin. I didn’t want to be here, couldn’t face the memories waiting in that house.
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell Link to turn around. My teeth chattered, my lips numbing with the need to demand he drive away.
But how would I find Michio?
How did I even know Michio would be there?
I just know.
Horseshit. I couldn’t sense him, hadn’t seen him in the dream. I was operating on the precarious whim of hope.
Darwin panted beside me as I leaned against the wall in the rear of the van. I ran my fingers through his coat, over and over, seeking comfort, until Roark grabbed my arms and pulled me across the van and into his lap.
He held my cheek against the beat of his heart, his steady breaths pacing mine. He didn’t have to ask me what was wrong, didn’t tell me we could turn around and leave. He simply held me, waiting for me to talk or not talk.
“Is this the neighborhood?” Link’s voice broke through my thoughts.
Roark gripped my face and pressed his lips softly against mine, whispering into the kiss, “I’m here, love.”
Nodding, I kissed him back and rose to my knees to crawl between Link and Jesse in the front seats.
Link stared out the windshield. “You said there was a Pump ‘N Go with a red roof?”
I followed his gaze, and across a crumbling parking lot stood the gas station at the front of my neighborhood. A brutish woman, Jan, used to work there, always glaring and grunting when I bought cigarettes from her. I’d hated her attitude but missed it now, my stomach twisting with the loss of my old life.
“We’re here.” I glanced at the side mirrors, taking in the line of eight trucks and vans behind us.
Forty-two people made up our crew. If the Drone had taken up residency in my house with an army of aphids, I should be able to kill them with a thought while our soldiers fired hundreds of arrows into the Drone’s melted face. Only, he’d always overpowered my abilities, his control over the aphids stronger than mine.
I blew out a breath and reminded Link of my concerns.
“I came for a fight, Little Ladybird.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the gear shifter. “Which way?”
“It’s the eighth street on the right. Top of the hill on the left.” I gave him the house number.
He started to put the van into drive.
Jesse’s arm shot out and gripped his wrist. “Evie stays here until the property is cleared.”
It was a softly spoken statement, but there was nothing soft about Jesse. His eyes hardened, his fingers tightened around Link’s arm, and his stubble bristled with the clench of his jaw.
“Not this again.” Link glanced at the hand on his arm and narrowed his glare at Jesse. “She can kill the aphids and prevent casualties. She’s going.”
Too bad I couldn’t telepathically reach my house from here. I needed to be a lot closer. “I can wait at the bottom of my street. That would be close enough but still out of sight.”
The sharp angles on Jesse’s face darkened, his profile etched in displeasure. “If you can sense the Drone’s army, he can sense you.” He glared at Link. “This is as close as she goes until the area’s been swept.”
Silence coiled through the van as Link and Jesse exchanged murderous looks, the fermata of tension stretching and straining so long I struggled to breathe.
Link cracked first, yanking his arm away. “I’m in charge, and I’m telling you right fucking now, we’re taking her with us.” He grabbed the gear shifter.
Jesse’s pupils dilated. Oh shit. I reached out to touch him, an attempt to calm him, but Roark’s arm hooked around my mid-section and yanked me backward just as Jesse launched from his seat.
He slammed Link against the door, his palm flat on the glass, his other hand holding a compact machete against Link’s throat. I didn’t know he carried a knife, didn’t even see where he’d pulled it from, but there it was, its lethally curved blade producing a trickle of blood down Link’s neck.
“I let you think you’re in charge.” Jesse’s tone was calm, deadly calm.
His hard-edged features and powerful body bowed over the other man. Primed packs of muscle, wild hair, intense eyes, the severe lines of his jaw, every threatening inch of him demanded compliance and promised a painful death if Link so much as breathed wrong.
“Never turn your back on the quiet ones,” Link mumbled to himself, his fingers wrapped around Jesse’s wrist, his eyes tightening into slivers. “Knew you’d cut my throat eventually.”
Jesse cocked his head, his face slacking into a bored expression. “Do as I say, and you might keep your neck.”
Behind me, Darwin growled deep and low. I reached back and smoothed my palm along his muzzle.
Link shifted his hips in the seat, his head pressed against the window. “Are you getting blood on my shirt?”
A narrow dribble painted a crimson path from the blade, down his throat, and dotted the collar of his white t-shirt.
Link met my eyes over Jesse’s shoulder and must’ve read the confirmation in my expression. “Fuck, man. This was a clean fucking shirt.”
A muscle jumped in Jesse’s cheek. “You’re going to jump in one of the trailing vehicles, check out the house, and report back to me.”
Link’s lips rolled together. “Unless I’m killed when I get there.”
“You wanted a fight.” Jesse arched a brow in challenge. “I expect you back in ten minutes with my report.”
I leaned forward, pushing against Roark’s arm. “The van that Shea’s in stays here, too.”
Too bad Shea couldn’t sense aphids. I might’ve considered sending her ahead to see if she could feel them.
“Fuck.” Link’s nostrils flared. “Fine. Get off me, asshole.”
Jesse slid back to the passenger seat and sheathed the blade inside his leather jacket. Link remained pressed against the door with his hand around his throat, and only when Jesse gave him a curt chin lift did he grab his crossbow and exit the van.
He waved his arms at the waiting vehicles, directing them where to go. Seven of the eight trucks whipped by. The van that held Shea pulled behind us and parked, and the last truck picked up Link along the way.
I blew out a heavy breath. All the men had been given a description of Michio. They knew what the mission was and most importantly, they knew not to kill him unless he’d been compromised. I chose not to acknowledge that possibility.
Roark shifted around me and slid behind the wheel, turning the key and shutting off the ignition.
I knelt on the floor between them and met Jesse’s eyes. Darkness edged his expression, but when I blinked, it was gone.
There was a quiet kind of bruta
lity in this man, a ruthlessness concealed beneath the leather, like his knife. He wasn’t pompous or mouthy or reckless, so it was easy to underestimate him. Until it was too late. He was a man who feared nothing. Except my death.
I wished I could unburden him of that worry, but the most predictable, certain thing about this life was death. No one could escape it. “A machete? You’re full of surprises.”
“Says the woman who can blow up aphids with her mind.” His lips twitched, and he grabbed me beneath the arms and hauled me into his lap. “It’s a khukuri not a machete, darlin’.”
Sitting sideways across his thighs, I pulled open his jacket. The curved blade tucked securely in a leather sheath, beneath his arm. “What other weapons are you hiding?”
Roark rubbed his jaw, his eyes roaming my body. “Wha’ has gotten into ye?”
“Nothing at the moment, but we have ten minutes to fix that.”
Jesse pinched my chin, angling my head toward him. “Seriously, Evie. Something’s up. We’re not complaining—”
“Definitely no complaints.” Roark grinned.
“—but you’re insatiable. You’ve always been a sexual creature, and Christ, I love that about you.” Jesse lifted his hips and nudged himself against my ass. “But this is a whole other level. Do you feel different? Have you noticed any other changes?”
I gripped his hand and held it between mine in my lap. “I don’t know. I’m hungrier. Hornier.” I peeked up at his hooded expression and looked down at our hands. “I have so much energy I feel like I’m bursting with it.”
Roark draped his arm over the steering wheel, his expression thoughtful as he gazed out the windshield. He opened his mouth to say something, then squinted, his posture snapping straight as one of our delivery trucks came speeding down the street toward us.
He rolled down the window, and the black truck skidded to a stop beside us.
Link leaned over the door, deep grooves lining his forehead. “It’s gone.”
My heart raced. “What’s gone?”
“Your house. It’s burnt to the ground.”
I stared at the black hole that had once been my house, my gaze stumbling over singed wood beams and melted glass windows and twisted metal railings. Grief, fury, and harrowing pain scorched through my veins and burned my lungs, laboring my breaths, made worse with the inhalation of black dust.
It was just a house. A house that had been designed by Joel and me, the foundation poured with our dreams, the walls strengthened with the laughter of our children, and the roof buttressed with our love. Before the plague, I’d never envisioned leaving it. But when I was chased away, forced to abandon it, I’d carried with me a seed of comfort that the house was here, sheltering the archives of my past life like an impenetrable vault.
With no one around to put out the fire, there was no roof, not a single wall left standing, the foundation crushed beneath the destruction. Annie’s closet of ruffled dresses…Gone. Aaron’s collection of Star Wars action figures…Gone.
I didn’t need to ask how or who. My house hadn’t just burned to the ground. It was swallowed by thick layers of spider webs.
Scalding hatred burned the back of my throat. What a vile son of a bitch, leaving his webby funk on everything he destroyed, on everything I loved.
I stepped through the rubble of charred wood and soot, my boots tangling in nets of silk strings. The dappling shadows beneath the fallen walls no longer smoldered, the embers long gone. I couldn’t sense the dead aura of the Drone or the pulse of aphids. Couldn’t feel the warm hum of Michio’s presence.
Nothing lived here, nothing remained but the lingering aroma of smoke and burnt memories.
I’d left Darwin in Shea’s van with her, but Jesse and Roark hovered like shadows at my elbows. It would’ve been unnerving and downright fucked up to take my lovers on a tour of the home I’d shared with my family, but I would’ve preferred that to this.
Every incinerated flake that stirred beneath my steps made me shudder. Each groan of settling timber penetrated my chest and tightened my insides into an agonizing knot of hell. My shoulders hunched around my ears, my arms crossed defensively, and my entire body trembled in pain.
I wanted to be stronger, or at the very least, appear stronger. Forty men stood around watching me, and every one of them had lost something or someone meaningful. But the reminder didn’t help me stand taller or braver.
I looked out across the backyard, a view I’d once cherished from my deck. Blackened debris filled the in-ground pool. The maple trees rustled, covering the ground with dead, brown leaves. The valley of rolling hills and lavish homes now lay in ruins of cement and weeds. But they weren’t burned. No, that calamity only fell upon my house.
Jesse’s hand slid into mine, pulling my arm away from my torso. “Annie and Aaron…” He cleared his voice, softening it. “Their spirits used to talk about this place. The pool. The lightning bugs. The little lizards they would catch near the rock wall.”
Swallowing past a thick throat, I stared at the corner of the yard where the rock wall once stood and willed their ghosts to appear, if only for a moment, so I could trace their sweet faces with my gaze while I told them I loved them and missed them so, so much.
“Joel cremated them here.” My voice cracked in the crisp air. “He spread their ashes over the property.”
I was so thankful he hadn’t buried them, that their tiny bodies weren’t stuck in the ground beneath the sad waste of their home.
A terrible noise rose up in my throat, the sound shocking me. I covered my mouth, blinking burning eyes and wondering if I’d finally cry.
But the tears didn’t come, not even when Roark’s arms came around me, squeezing my chest to his.
I held onto his strength, my thoughts spinning into a mess of shattered images. I saw the day I’d brought Annie home from the hospital, carrying her into the house for the first time, her little body wrapped in pink blankets. I heard the patter of Aaron’s footsteps when he sneaked into bed with Joel and me at night. I smelled the rich aroma of Cavendish tobacco that clung to Joel’s skin when he made love to me.
Then I felt the pain, digging, clawing, and biting through my mind until all I knew was pain. Memories held power, the power to shut everything off and hurt so deeply and viciously that nothing else existed. So much fucking pain.
“We’re still here.” Roark’s brogue rumbled over me, his embrace squeezing my ribs. “Ye still have us.”
Jesse moved against my back and touched his forehead to my shoulder.
Roark’s words and Jesse’s silent support struck a chord, plucking me from the paralyzing depths of memory and yanking me to the surface.
My home had been destroyed long ago and not by a fire. It stopped existing when my family died. But Jesse and Roark were still here. My new family. I wasn’t alone.
Closing my eyes, I let the ache of my loss fall away like tears. Then I pulled in a shredded breath, blinked rapidly, and cleared my eyes of dust.
“Yeah.” I stood taller, breathed a little bit easier, and strengthened my stance. Smoothing my palms over the breast of Roark’s coat, I stretched on tiptoes and kissed the soft hairs that had grown on his chin. “Thank you.”
I reached back, found Jesse’s hand, and gave it a squeeze.
“Now what?” Link strode toward us, his crossbow slung over his back.
“You have trackers, right? Put them on the Drone’s trail.” I stepped out from between Jesse and Roark, ready to get the hell away from this dead place. “If people are talking about us, let’s drag them out of their hidey-holes and find out what they’ve heard about a man with a cape and wings.”
Link’s head turned slowly, ever-so slowly in my direction, as if he were deliberately trying to intimidate me with…what? A slowly turning head? Whatever.
His black eyes took their time, too, finally resting on mine. “That’s your plan?”
“Got a better one?” Jesse asked, his eyes scanning our surroundings.
“Nope.” Link grinned.
Apparently, he wasn’t holding any grudges against Jesse. Smart man.
I moved to walk back to the van, refusing to give the charred remains of my house a soul-sucking good-bye, but as I took a step, I felt…twitchy. Another step, and a warm, glowing sensation settled over me, like someone had turned on a bulb and held it close to my skin.
Then, as if a door had been opened to a deep unseen world that buzzed with electricity, a wave of static energy released into the air and trickled through my body in steady, humming pulses.
I spun, lungs pumping and eyes frantically searching the street while my mind narrowed on nothing but that hum. “Michio?”
The cool breeze whispered back, breathing icy tendrils beneath my hair and down my nape. But the hum remained, stronger now, searing through my blood.
“Ye feel Michio?” Roark turned in a circle, visually probing the houses and overgrown yards. “Where?”
As the hum quaked through my body, I tried to trace the source. It didn’t draw outward in threads like the aphids. It spread like a beam of light. I should’ve been able to pinpoint where it concentrated, but it felt like it was coming from every direction.
“Everywhere?” I panted hopeful gusts of air and scrambled over the rubble toward the street, looking in both directions. “I don’t know.”
Jesse paced around me on the street, his bow in one hand, the other raking through his hair as his sunlit glare burned over the landscape. “I don’t like this. What do you mean everywhere?”
The humming sensation felt like Michio, but it didn’t. The night Michio left, I could sense his general direction. Granted, it had only been seconds before he blinked away. But now?
“There’s no clear direction.” I curled my hands into fists. He had to be out there, and my heart thundered with every second that passed. Every second that I might’ve been losing him. “Let’s spread out.”
The moment the words left my mouth, a blur of movement spread over the horizon. I whirled, turning completely around, my gaze darting in every direction. I couldn’t see that far to make out what they were, but the blur of countless tall, dark shapes seemed to emerge from everywhere. In a few seconds, they would be surrounding us.