Dead of Eve (33 page)

I met the Drone’s glare with my own. “Why did you bite me?”

He tongued the corner of his mouth. “To taste your submission.” The wrinkle lines around his eyes didn’t move, but his pupils pulsed.

Fuck, he was sick, but he was hiding something. I sat a little taller. “Where are your wings?”

The Imago lost his grip on his glass, dumping its contents in his lap.

The Drone remained motionless, except for the slow climb of one brow over darkening eyes. “Wings?”

“To match your vampire fangs.” Pride swelled at the steadiness of my voice. Not a trace of fear despite the wild thumping in my chest. I tried to muster a smile to match but couldn’t get my mouth to work right.

He curled his lip, making a show of normal teeth, and reclined in his chair. “I am bored with these questions. Further utterances from that disrespectful mouth better offer a sapid discussion.”

How should I know what topics would interest a psychopath? “How did you find me?”

“Aphid messengers. They discovered you a year ago then tracked you in the U.K.”

He communicated with them? Sure, I had a kind of connection with aphids, but I didn’t speak their language. “How does it work? Do you hold biweekly staff meetings with coffee, crumpets and human hearts? Then you sit back and listen in on the pitch and tone of their vibrations?”

The Drone’s smile was oily, slicking its way across the table, thick and heavy and oxygen stealing. The doctor seemed to feel it too if the labored movement of his chest was anything to go by.

“What are your real names?”

The smile dissipated. “Her bold inquisitiveness and shamelessly lifted eyes rub my patience. Yet, I feel compelled to answer. It is…curious.” His fingers traced the flat edge of a paring knife that lay next to his plate. “My name was Dr. Aiman Jabara. And my brother was Siraj Jabara.”

Was? “Why the self-dubbed titles?”

“We renounced our birth names,” the Imago said, “when we accepted our new lives under Allah’s guidance. Our titles are appropriate to our stations.”

Did they realize how insane they sounded? More so when I remembered where I’d heard those designations. The entomology text stated a drone served one purpose: fertilizing the queen. And an imago was some kind of sexually developed insect. They chose those titles because they were appropriate? A shiver chilled the sweat on my spine.

The paring knife glinted under the Drone’s fingertips. I could slip free of the doctor’s invisible chain. Lunge across the table. Use that knife to flay the skin from the Drone’s face. With the slightest pressure, the razor edge would curl away his epidermis and relieve him of his vile attractiveness. But the doctor proved he was faster than me. Would I be stupid enough to try it?

“Let me see if I understand,
Drone
. You and Dr. Nealy donate your prestigious qualifications to the study of aphids so your brother can control them with blood darts?”

Agitation sharpened his laughter. “You have it partially correct, yet you neglect the crux of our roles. You see, it was Dr. Nealy and I who created the nymph virus and the Imago who delivered it to your country.”

His admission slammed into me, squeezed my lungs. I was dining with the murderers of my A’s.

Clanking and shuffling stiffened the hairs on my neck. The doctor glanced over my shoulder at whatever activity was entering the hall. I followed his gaze.

Roark hung from the wall at the far end. Shredded cassock. Blood soaked curls. Head bowed.

My heart thudded, ripped open, and propelled me over the table. Eyes on the paring knife. My chair skidded. The table creaked. A dish of stacked noodles clattered to the floor. My hands came up empty.

The Drone jumped to his feet and wagged the knife.

Steel bands gripped my legs and braced me upright. I raised my arms and dropped from the doctor’s hold. My knees hit the stone floor.

He bent, reaching, leaving his femoral nerve in perfect range. I rolled to my feet, raised the hem to my thighs, and put everything I had into a Thai round kick.

The line of power from my leg whooshed past him as he sidestepped in a fluid movement, swinging his and whacking me behind the knees. I stumbled and spun away.

Across the room, Roark bucked in his restraints.

I pumped my arms. My outstretched legs ripped through my skirt and closed the distance.

An arm caught me halfway. I pivoted, twined my fingers around the doctor’s nape and pulled down. His body followed. I delivered a knee to his solar plexus. It struck brick as I rammed his gut again and again.

Then I slipped free. It was too easy. In the next second, I knew why. Vibrations plagued my insides. The aphid dam cracked.

I skidded to a stop in front of Roark. Curls clung to the dripping red gash along his hairline. Blood caked his eyes and crusted his gag. Metal shackles circled his wrists and ankles and fastened to hooks in the wall. I yanked the chains. No give. Until I found the key, all I could do was shield him.

My fingers, numb like the rest of me, found the tie on the back of his head. His gag dropped.

He blinked through matted lashes. “You’re as beautiful and fierce as ever, love.”

His lilt was hoarse, pained, but his slow smile sent my pulse singing through my veins. I traced my thumbs over his lips.

Buzzing pitched over my shoulder. I put my back against him. The aphids stalked closer. Why, when they could blur next to me in a heartbeat?

Roark jerked against my back. “You’re gonna have to run. Run, now.”

My body trembled with their hunger. Their pangs scrambled my concentration. But something else was there as well. A strange hesitancy. Did they fear me? My field of vision extended to my captors. The Drone had returned to his seat at the table, the paring knife twirling between his fingers.

The Imago prowled beside him. The barrel of the dart gun rested on his shoulder.

I met his arrogant gaze. “Call them off.”

“Oh, I think it’s too late for that.” He reclaimed his chair next to the Drone, who was tapping the blade of his knife against the table.

Roark’s body would’ve been a comforting support against my back if his heart wasn’t thumping so wildly. “Evie, bloody listen to me.”

I rose on tiptoes. The doctor stood behind the approaching aphids, shoulders rolled back, expression vacant.

A crescent of aphids formed around us. Twenty or more orbs locked on the man at my back. I reached behind me. His cassock gaped at his abdomen, the buttons gone. I slipped my arms through the opening and traced the taut muscle around his waist.

“Bloody hell, Evie.” His body pulsated, clanking the chains. “I’m gonna ram Lucifer’s horns up your arse if ye den’ get it moving.”

My growl joined his, but I aimed it at the mutants. The warmth of his skin under my hands felt like a jolt, connecting us, strengthening me. He would live, goddammit, and I let that single thought energize every cell in my body.

The segmented feet froze midstride. A few aphids stepped back. Was I doing that? Holding them?

Their bodies shook with need. Their reverberations jumbled their want with mine.

Without turning, I ran my fingers over the shackles and the hooks within reach. “Who has the key?”

He bucked against me. “Evie, be off with ye.”

“A little busy. The key?”

A ragged sigh. “The wanker with the dart gun.”

No biggie. I felt intoxicated from the energy pouring from the aphids. Their arms stretched, jaws snapping, torsos heaving, but their feet remained glued to the floor.

The doctor walked a cautious circuit around them, studying them, his brows curled in question marks.

Holy hell, they were following my will. I could control them. To what extent? My head felt lighter even as my arms weighed down.

When the doctor stepped around the aphid wall and within kicking distance of me, I reinforced my backbone and my glare. “You said Roark wouldn’t be harmed.”

“I said he wouldn’t be harmed as long as you cooperate.” The doctor raised a pair of manacles. “Hold out your hands.”

I looked over my shoulder. A petition burned in Roark’s green depths.
Fight back,
it begged.

Without looking away, I spun my heel and punched with my other foot. A twist of my hip sent my leg down a straight line and met the doctor’s arm. The manacles clanked across the floor.

He lifted his eyebrows. I kicked again to sweep his leg. He rolled out of my reach, landed on his feet. The movement forced me to readjust. In that moment, he closed the distance. Through a soft flowing motion of his arms, he held me, locked me and released me. I felt like water in his hands, as if he took my energy, changed it into any form he chose then overpowered it. He was toying with me.

I made a winding strike toward his throat. He shifted his entire body out of range, yet I never saw him move. It wasn’t a discipline I knew. What was my defense if I didn’t know what I was up against? I clenched my jaw, spread my feet—weight distributed for a springing attack—and extended my jab hand just below my brow.

He flanked me. His arm came down. I lunged, but he was faster. His hand chopped my neck like a sword. A stitch burst through my head, dotted my vision. My palms slapped the floor.

Roark’s shouts swelled and ebbed. Cold metal squeezed my wrists. Then I was standing, supported by the doctor.

“To which martial art do I owe my humiliation?”

His arm around my waist tensed and he whispered at my ear, “An ancient one. But your attention is misplaced. How will you save your priest? For now Aiman and Siraj must follow through on their
lesson
.”

Aiman and Siraj. The Drone and the Imago. Vilely self-titled. Vainglorious, they were, slithering toward us, smirking and whispering.

The Drone raised a hand, fingers bending and unbending. The air stirred, condensed, and the aphids regained the movement of their legs.

Their hum pinched my gut. The doctor’s cold arms pinned mine and the Drone’s chin rose in victory.

I could really use Jesse’s protection right about then, but I’d found the architects of my fucked up genetics. They knew nothing of the abilities I’d gained with it. My revenge would be intimate.

The human being is flesh and consciousness, body and soul;

his heart is an abyss which can only be filled by that which is godly.

Olivier Messiaen

Roughened stone scratched the backs of my hands. Metal rings protruded from the rock wall, holding my shackles in place.

The doctor’s eyes moved over mine as if he could read me. “You look entirely too smug”—he yanked the slack from the restraints—“for someone in your position.”

I tried to shrug. The chains rattled. He didn’t know the only thing keeping my shit together was the notion that I wouldn’t need my hands to turn the starving army against him.

Roark’s oaky musk emanated an arm’s length away. The sidelong view of his blood-drenched head, drooping under the burden of gravity, constricted my chest. But there was fight in the set of his jaw.

The doctor stepped out of my vision. The Imago moved in, leaned a shoulder on the wall and rooted a finger through my headscarf. When he found an opening on my nape, he drew imaginary circles over the skin, raising the hairs there.

Black lashes spread over his cheekbones. He inhaled and the lashes snapped up. “Ready for your lesson?”

Roark arched his back in a swell of outrage, eyes blazing, and voice wheezing through clamped teeth. “Den’ ye bloody touch her.”

An exhale oozed from the Imago’s flared nostrils. Then he spun toward Roark with an unleashed fist. The wet smack stole my breath.

Roark stretched a toothy smirk through the red river coursing from his nose. “That’s all ye got, ye goat-fucking toerag?”

His fist reared again. Roark grunted under the blow to his abdomen, the corners of his mouth rigid.

My pulse raced, faster than I thought possible, leaving me trembling and panicked. So much so, I didn’t notice the new threat until hot breath dampened the wrap around my neck.

“Mmm, your quivering is delectable,” the Drone hummed in my ear. His hip chafed mine, his proximity oiling away the layers of air between us, seeping beneath the surface of my skin.

He ground his flaccid dick against me, punctuating each word with a pant. “I want to want you.”

Fucking mouth-breather. “I want to gut you.”

He clutched his side, face twisted, breaths pushing out in sprays of spit.

“What’s your problem? Dick won’t work?”

He grabbed a handful of my headscarf, hair with it, and yanked my neck down in a submissive bow. “How would you feel if people thought we were lovers? Do you want that?”

“There are no people. And there will never be anything resembling love between us.”

He released my head, sending it careening back. The bite from the wall spiked from my crown to my eyes.

When my vision cleared, he was gliding over to Roark in that slimy way he moved.

“Pity to defile such a beautiful creature.” He tore the front of Roark’s pants open, baring his groin.

Roark growled. My heartbeat swished in my ears and the tension pouring from the leashed aphids stretched to the snapping point. How was the Drone still holding them when his attention was focused on us? Could I wrestle the control away from him?

The Imago circled Roark, blade in hand, slicing away the remainder of his clothes until he hung nude, biceps twitching against his sagging weight.

His wide jade eyes locked on the Drone, who hovered close enough to share his breath. Too fucking close. Even if I could get the aphids to attack on command, no way Roark would come out un-bitten. I wouldn’t chance it. My stomach dropped.

The Drone’s mouth ticked up and his back straightened. A rattan cane appeared from under his cloak.

An extension of his arm, the cane shot up. I stopped breathing as it whistled down.

Roark’s torso jerked under the impact. His cheeks paled, flexed, no doubt bottling a scream. A red welt ballooned above his nipple. Oh, Roark.

My eyes clung to the cane as it rose again. “Not him. No more.” I rammed my arms against the wall. “It’s my punishment. Not his.”