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With Jesse’s shadow hovering at my elbow, I walked the edge of a concrete moat of black water, squinting at the strange structure towering over the land at the center. Trees surrounded massive rock walls, which were hollowed out with crevices and caves. Way too many places for creatures to hide.
I couldn’t stop my nerves from rattling my voice. “What is this place?”
Roark paused in front of me, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. “Relax the cacks, love.” His gaze roamed the ring of water, snagging on the rippling reflections of moonlight. “It was an island for monkeys. See the vines?”
He pointed to the canopy, and sure enough, braids of thick rope snaked between the trees. But not a monkey in sight. A closer look at the field surrounding the moat confirmed that Georges stood some thirty yards off, rifle in hand. And we left Tallis with Shea, who was still safely caged and sleeping.
I drew a deep breath. “Are you sure Michio headed this way?”
What if he left? Would he do that? Leave me? Panic spiraled through me, but I paced my breathing, shoulders squared, chin up.
“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.
