Dead of Eve (17 page)

Badger snuffed out the fire and squatted next to me.

“Can you see them?” I whispered through the dark. The flickers moved closer.

“No. I hear them,” he said.

Only a few yards separated us from them. But they were as night blind as my companions.

“There are five,” I said. “They’re close now.”

Badger’s face hovered inches from mine, his eyes wide and calculating. I knew what he planned. Save the damsel. But he’d never seen this damsel fight, didn’t know I wouldn’t need saving.

I turned away from him, lunged at the aphid vaulting toward our huddle, and collided with it in midair. We rolled into a boulder. Its eyes stared without seeing. An easy plunge. I regained the blade. The hole that was its eye spouted black blood.

I pivoted. The others inched toward my friends. I ran toward their glow, took down the next three as easy as the first.

The last one danced around me. I grabbed it, pulled its chest to mine, and tucked my head under the flex of its mandible. The aphid’s oily body slipped free. It shook its head, chin thick with spit.

I fell back, heaved a dagger. The aphid bent with a blur. The knife crashed through the brush. I flung the next two. Missed the kill shot. What the fuck was wrong with me?

One blade left. “Um guys? Now would be a good time to run.”

I jumped on the thing’s chest. Raised the knife. Focused all my strength in that swing. The blade’s momentum ceased. A hit. I slid off the torso, landed beneath it, looked up.

My final blade protruded from its jaw, just above two others in its neck.

The aphid mounted me. I dodged the mouth and angled my body to reach one of the protruding knives.

When Badger jumped on its back, I screamed, “Goddammit. You’re supposed to be running.”

The aphid bucked, crashed Badger into a tree and pinned me to the packed dirt.

Fuck. Had my training waned that much during those restful winter months? Instead of killing it, I needed follow my own advice and fucking run. I dodged its strikes, tried to wiggle free. Just needed my leg—

A shrill ripped from its throat. It crumpled on top of me.

A couple pounding breaths later, I pushed it off. A tomahawk jutted from the back of its head, the blade buried to the hilt. The ax’s owner bent down, copper eyes inches away. The lines around Jesse’s mouth creased with tenderness. With his scowl lifted, his beautiful face radiated. “You all right?”

I blinked through the grime caking my eyes. “Yes.” Ugh, that sounded weak. I coughed, raised my chin. “Yes.” There. Much better.

He wiped the blood from my cheeks and smeared it over his own. “
Wanunhecun
. I misjudged you.” Then he freed his tomahawk from the aphid skull and stalked into the forest.

My whole body seemed to revolt at my refusal to run after him, but I collected my knives and dealt with it. I still didn’t trust him.

I woke the next morning to Badger chattering on about the prior night. The same noise I fell asleep to. Apparently, not disheartened by my attack on the web of life.

I moaned and gave him a glower he couldn’t misinterpret. “What about the hunt we came for?”

Naalnish eyed me. “There’s a bend in the gorge. We’ll guard while you dip. Then we’re heading back.”

I held my arms in front of me. Dried blood and dirt left only a few patches of visible skin. “No hunt.”

“Another day.” Worry lines fanned from his dark eyes.

The aphid battle must have spoiled Naalnish’s hunting spirit. “Okay.”

I scrubbed my skin until my goose pimples were red and sore. The protection of towering gorge walls and my trust in Badger and Naalnish accorded me comfort in my nudity. Still, the feeling of being watched was an electric current licking my skin.

“What does
wanunhecun
mean?” My voice bounced between the walls.

Badger responded from around the corner, “The Lakota do not have a word for
sorry.
In the case of an accident,
mistake
or
wanunhecun
is sufficient.”

So Jesse admitted fault? I cupped water over one arm until the rust-tinged rivulets turned clear. Knowing Jesse was somewhere close filled me with warmth. And that feeling irritated the piss out of me. I was entirely too curious about the man behind those fire brimmed eyes.

I squatted, giving my hair a final rinse. I wanted to ignore the attraction, but the slumbering need in my womb had awoken. The part of me that longed to heal wanted to hear the song again. I wanted what I had with Joel. Not just the sexual assuagement. I craved the emotional connection.

“Evie?” Badger bellowed. “Everything okay?”

“On my way.” I dressed and buckled on the blades, slamming the door on thoughts about Jesse and his apology.

On the hike back, the brothers stopped to celebrate the victory of our fight by chanting a meditative song to the Great Mystery. I sneaked away to go to the bathroom, taking my time among the red and purple blooms of the rhododendron.

From the thrall of the scenery came a whisper without voice. I spun, tripped. The summons burrowed in my chest and festered in my gut.

I followed the pull, let it guide my feet. A short hike later, I stood before a wall of exposed sandstone. A paltry shanty nestled in its shade. The air shuddered around me. A bird took flight somewhere to my right. I crept closer.

An eerie stillness enshrouded the structure. The walls seemed to bulge with an ominous warning humming from within. And there, on the porch drenched in darkness, a small figure appeared. Eyes and expression hid behind shadows. An arm stretched up, waved.

My pulse quickened. The child’s body changed density, somewhere between real and not, and floated through the open doorway.

The children are our guides. They preserve the truth.

Shit. It could be Aaron or Annie. I had to follow. I shook out tired muscles, steeled my spine, and approached the porch.

The hair on my arms stood on end. A furry bundle darkened a step. I picked it up and turned it over. Aaron’s Booey, soggy with blood. I clutched it to my chest. Why would he leave it there?

Tree branches groaned. Two more steps and I reached the threshold.

A shriek snapped through the silence. The pitch of the voice froze me. A woman?

Her moaning seeped from the walls and ripped down my spine. It couldn’t be. I squeezed the bear. Oh God, a woman. I forced my feet inside.

So I wait for you like a lonely house

till you will see me again and live in me.

Till then my windows ache.

Pablo Neruda

I choked on the stench of mildew and stagnant water. Green-black mold carpeted the cabin’s walls. Behind another door, a woman cried. Dread clotted inside me. But I kept my feet moving, the groan of battered boards announcing each step.

A bloody handprint dripped on the door, tiny and low. Aaron’s? Couldn’t be real. The wailing on the other side weakened to a whimper. With the tip of the dagger, I nudged the door open.

The woman leapt back, hands blocking her face. Black strands straggled from her balding scalp. Rags matted her cadaverous frame. She dropped her hands, patting the bed behind her.

Her lips were pinched. Her features were human, all but the tiny pupils staring back. Then she opened her mouth. A howl escaped and insectile mouthparts writhed in her throat.

She jumped on the bed, crouched, arms outstretched. Her legs folded over lumps in the sheets. The lumps took shape, forming images I tried to reject. She shifted. A small rotting head rolled off the bed, thudded to the floor. She hovered over the bodies of three dead children.

Heart banging against my ribs, I clutched the bear tighter. The decay in the air was long gone, yet the heads on the bed retained pristine faces. My A’s. I knew my mind was twisting reality. Still, I inched closer. I had to be sure. The bed shook under her growing agitation. Her shrills rattled the ramshackle roof.

“Evie.” A Texan drawl next to my ear. “No sudden movements.” An arm snaked around me and pulled my back against a solid chest.

I reached toward the bed, Booey in one hand. “I need to—”

“No. She’s really pissed. We’re gonna back up nice and easy, like.”

The woman bent over the bodies and stroked the head of one. Clumps of curls fell away in her fingers. The skull wobbled under her touch, no longer bearing a familiar face. Gray skin stretched over cheek bones and sunk into an overextended jaw and hollow eyes.

“Okay, Jesse.”

His arm tightened around me. He walked us backwards and out of the shack. She didn’t follow. I doubt she moved from that bed. Jesse led me to the safety of the forest canopy and stepped back, but not away.

I held out the cold wet thing in my hands. An opossum carcass. I dropped it. My knees followed. Then I wrung out my stomach until nothing was left. What was wrong with me? It wasn’t a vision. It was fucking delusion.

Jesse knelt at my side. I dragged my sleeve along my mouth. “You saw that?” Tell me I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing.

“The nymph? Yes.” Ruts formed between his brows. “And I felt it. The same pain that haunts you.”

“I don’t know what…” I did know the nymph’s despair. To have children and dreams…then only emptiness.

He offered a sweatshirt from his pack, gestured to the blood and bile soaking mine. I gave him my back and switched shirts. His voice carried over my shoulder. “All living things share the same air. We are of one blood.”

I faced him. He stared at the shack, swallowed. “Even the mourning nymph.”

His gaze grabbed mine. He reached for my hands and interlaced our fingers. His eyes, whiskey warm, searched my face. “The Lakota believe the Great Mystery has two halves. Sometimes, the evil half shows us more than the good half.” His thumb caressed the back of my hand, stroked between my fingers. “I know you had children.” He squeezed my hands when I tried to pull them away.

“What? How, Jesse?” I never mentioned them. Never.

“You’ll save her, Evie. She is your path.”

I jerked my hands. His grip tightened.

How the hell could he think the nymph could be saved? Her mind was gone, her body half-dead. And what did I have to do with it? I didn’t even want her saved, did I? Our rotten race deserved what it got. Something pinched in my chest.

The nymph’s cries chased the wind, brushing the hair from my face and chilling the air. Jesse held on to my hands, the certainty in his eyes elaborating what his words did not. I came to that forest, to that foothill, to that cabin. I couldn’t deny the tug. The same force that pulled me east, to the ocean, and beyond.

Jesse tipped his brow to mine and a heavy silence mantled us. Our breaths melded. The charged current between us made me want to pull him closer. I needed Joel in the worst way.

I untangled our hands and stood. “I’m ready to leave.”

He let me go.

The Drone’s face floated above me, a brass knuckle dagger in his hand. “Are you pristine, Eveline?” His accent rolled the “p” like a “b.”

I spat in his face. His tongue darted out, reaching for the drops of saliva. Then he turned his head and sliced the abdomen of the nymph tied down beside me. Through the fountain of blood, he plunged his hand into her womb, sinking his arm to the elbow. Her wails filled the room.

His shoulders wrenched and his arm reappeared. From his hand, dangled a fetus by its leg. It echoed its mother’s cries. The Drone snarled at it, revealing sizeable incisors. Then he tossed it over his shoulder.

The crack of bones against the wall silenced its cry. I raised my head, baring my own teeth. Another swipe of steel and the nymph’s head thumped to the floor.

The Drone’s onyx eyes flashed as he licked the gore from his dagger. Then he smacked his lips and purred, “If you are without an evil-doer’s scion, Eveline, you shall become my queen. Together we will populate the world with Allah’s chosen. My chosen.”

Consciousness came in a dance of shadows pierced by splotches of light. Akicita wiped my brow with a soft tanned skin.