Dead of Eve (45 page)

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

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.”

He tilted his head and pressed a kiss into my captured palm. “Missed ye more.”

Michio shifted his weight and crossed his arms. “It’s important you tell me if anything hurts. You had a seizure.”

“I’ll feel better if you tell me where Jesse is.”

Another shift of hips. “He went after Aiman.”

When I opened my mouth, Roark pressed a finger over it. “He’s got a pilot with him. He’ll meet us in Italy.”

If he survived the Drone and his aphid infested island. “That’s his Plan B?”

His knuckle tapped my chin. “He’ll catch up.”

Michio shoved medical instruments in his bag with impatient and uncharacteristic jerks. “Your vitals are normal, but your body underwent a lot of shock last night.”

“I feel fine.”

That turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. “You did good, Evie.”

Roark’s hand squeezed mine. “Ye redirected hundreds of aphids before ye couped. If ye hadn’t held them a’ the end—”

“Don’t.” I sat up. “Not till we know Jesse’s safe.”

The bedding gathered around my waist, the remains of my chemise gone. The puckered pink
C
on my chest gleamed against my pale complexion. I shoved the sheets out of my lap. Neat stitches crossed the cut that started at the apex of my inner thigh and stretched as long as the length of my hand.

“You’re a much better tailor than I am,” I said to Michio.

He straightened, watching me. “It’ll scar.”

I shrugged. “No worries. I’m collecting scars like Roark collects sins. All in the name of greater good.”

Roark sprinkled kisses on my back. “Scars, sins and”—his lips hovered—“spots.”

Michio’s frown deepened, his agitation impossible to ignore.

Maybe I should’ve squashed Roark’s open affection. But I had no shame when it came to either of them. I put a hand on Roark’s arm. “I need to tell you something.” I let him read my face while those gorgeous pools of jade melted things inside me. I cleared my throat and steeled my spine. “I slept with Michio.”

A smile split his face, but it wasn’t his easy smile. It seemed forced, tight in the corners, and didn’t sparkle his eyes. “I did too. He hogged the feckin’ covers all night.”

That surprised me. They both slept in that tiny bed with me? “You know what I mean.”

His mouth slacked and his arm left my waist. “I know.”

“I told him.” Michio’s careful tone.

“Oh.” I plucked at the sheets. “Now what?” Would they make me choose? Would it be a slow buildup of insecurity, jealously, rivalry?

Roark blew out a breath and slid from the bed, donned only in a pair of cutoff sweats. “Doc and I agree on this: we love ye, we’ll protect ye, but we will not possess ye. And seeing how you’re hauling yourself into danger all the time, I’ll be resting easier knowing you’re wearing a doctor a’ your side.” He glanced at the other man. “But we’ll have to do something about the swot’s bealin’ lack of humor.”

I was still stuck on
we love ye
. Thinking it was one thing. But hearing it…it was balm to my damaged soul. I just hoped there was enough left to love.

Michio turned to open a cabinet, distracting me with the way his cotton pants hugged the swell of his backside. “All your personal things are here.”

Darwin’s collar, my music player, Joel’s letter. It didn’t pass my notice that my bullet wasn’t among the collection.

“And here.” He crossed the room and unlatched a tall cabinet. Soft light splashed over my carbine, pistol and arm sheaths hanging from the racks. “These are your Lakota’s doing.”