Dead of Eve (53 page)

Michio pointed to a charred rock wall near the lowest level. “We’re here. Landmannalaugar.”

Amidst the geologic chaos, a leafy-covered steel door hung from the face of the ridge. My eyes followed the hyaloclastite ledges up, up, up to the ice-capped peak.

“The labs are through there.” Michio pointed at the door and alighted the horse. “Inside Hekla volcano.”

Of course they were. His hands clutched my waist and he slid me down. Then he turned toward the door, fisting his cane. The tip glinted with blades.

A tumult twined my insides, something I hadn’t felt since Reykjavik. We hadn’t seen an aphid since then. Why was that?

I released the carbine from its mount on the horse and Michio tapered his eyes at me. The tingling dimmed. I shook my head.

“Evie.” Roark appeared in front of me. “Wha’ is it?”

“I don’t—”

A giggle bounced along the rocky backdrop and raised the hair on my nape. I’d recognize my daughter’s sweet laugh anywhere. My shoulders bunched to my ears. “Where’s Jesse?”

Roark hovered so close his breath wisped my hair. “Den’ ye get buggered looking for him all the time?” He raised my chin and read my eyes. “Talk to me.”

I swallowed around a lump. The door to the labs blew open and snicked closed. “Something’s wrong. Why didn’t they come out to greet us?”

“The tunnels are deep and there’s no surveillance,” Michio replied. “But I agree. Something feels off.”

Annie’s singsong chant tiptoed across the lava field and carried above the roar of the waterfalls. Her high-pitched vibrato brushed by me. The door swung open again and slammed.

Jesse’s fingers interlaced mine. “Annie wants us to follow her in.”

I flinched. “Would she lead me into danger?”

Roark placed a hand on my elbow. “Good thought. She did lead ye to the Lakota.”

Jesse grinned and waved his hand toward the door. “After you, priest.”

Shoulder to shoulder, Michio, Jesse, Roark and I crept through the icy tunnel. Darwin slinked by, nose to the ground. Tallis and Georges trailed. Ivar and sons guarded the entrance.

We moved deeper into the volcano. Eventually, the frost melted from the walls and the air warmed. The dirt below our feet ended. Metal platforms stretched over the sloping ground to the flickering lights ahead.

Michio raised his voice over the clanking of our boots on the grates. “I haven’t been here for six months, but there were forty scientists when I left. We should’ve run into someone by now.” He nodded at the bend ahead. “We’re approaching the hub.”

Weapons at the ready, we stepped around the corner and onto an expansive balcony overlooking a pit. Scaffolding layered the multiple levels below. Tunnels and rooms branched in every direction.

We approached the railing. Our boots crunched glass. Broken equipment and workbenches were tossed across every level. Bullet holes chipped the rock walls, the metal platforms, and the furniture. I strained my eyes, scouring every nook and shadow. Not a single body, dead or alive.

“
Zut alors
,” Georges whispered from behind us.

“Let’s split up,” Jesse said. “Tallis, Georges, back here in thirty.”

We dispersed. Artificial light splashed over empty hallways and labs. We tossed bunks and tore out storage rooms. The facility was a shambles, the scientists gone. I leaned against the railing on the bottom level and rubbed my temples.

Jesse perched at my side. “It was the Drone’s army, wasn’t it?”

Michio nodded, lines fanning from the corners of his eyes.

A thrum bloomed in my chest and set my teeth on edge. Annie’s voice drifted from the hallway behind us with eerie clarity.

Connect the dots. La. La. Lala.

Jesse shot his eyes to me. Heat rushed to my ears. Then our heads turned toward the hall. The tail of a skirt whipped around the corner. We darted after her.

“Evie?” Roark called after me.

“It’s Annie,” I shouted over my shoulder.

Hm. Hm. Hmmm.

Connect the dots…

Every bend brought us another empty corridor, but Annie’s rhapsody didn’t falter.

We skidded at a dead end. Tiny pale fingers curled around the frame of the last doorway. The fingers whisked away. We followed with Michio and Roark on our heels.

Inside was another a storage room. Her voice muffled from within a tall cabinet.

La. La. La. La.

I trained the carbine on the cabinet door and swallowed. Jesse opened it. An entrance to another room. We stepped through, Jesse first.

A beaker crashed next to his head. Then a keyboard hit him in the chest. He nocked an arrow.

A spindly man hovered in front of a cage. He held a shaky soup can over his head. “Be gone.” His voice trembled.

“Michio,” I whispered, “Do you know this man?”

He stepped around me and shook his head. “You understand English?” he asked him.

The man nodded.

“I’m Dr. Michio Nealy. I work for the Shard. I’ve been on an undercover mission. You might have heard—.”

“Aiman Jabara?” He dropped the can, eyes bulging.

“Yes.” Michio took a step closer. “And you are?”

He thumped his chest. “Njall.” His eyes darted to the cage behind him and his chin dropped to his chest as he stepped to the side. “Her name Frida.” His English broke through a heavy Icelandic accent. “My wife.”

A hiss sprayed from the cage. Dull hair webbed her pallid face in thin strands. A hospital gown clung to her sunken frame. Tiny pupils flicked between us and a heavy rasp pushed from her lungs.

My heart banged against my ribs. Her gaze moved my feet closer. Until she opened her mouth. A tube slid in and out. Finger-like bits wiggled over the moving parts.

“I come after you left, Dr. Nealy,” Njall said as we stared at the cage. “For my wife, you see.”

“What happened here?” Michio eyes remained fixed on Frida.

“Lots of boom boom. I hide here. A week, maybe.”

Damn. We missed them by a mere week?

“
Kona.
” He pointed to me. “She cures? The Shard hoped.” He grabbed Michio’s arm, pulled him toward the cage. “Please.”

“Her name is Evie.” Michio’s tone was possessive as he stretched to his intimidating full height. “I’ve only tested her blood in the lab. Frida would be an experiment. You understand?”

“Please.” Puffy red skin weighted his eyes.

Michio searched my face. “Evie?”

“What do I need to do?”

He made a list of supplies and sent Jesse and Roark down the hall to collect. They returned a few minutes later with syringes, vials and a dart gun. Then he pricked my arm, filling a hollow reservoir of a tranquilizer dart with my blood.

Capture gun loaded, he aimed it at the cage. Njall shoved his fist in his mouth.

The dart sailed and landed in the nymph’s throat. She thrashed and dropped to her knees and a painful spasm erupted in my gut.

The next few moments bludgeoned by. Every sound, every stir was punctuated by a pounding in my head. Frida writhed on the floor of her cage. Annie’s chilling hum crept through the hall. And hundreds of vibrating strings knitted over my ribs, around my spine and fisted my stomach.

My lungs wheezed. I clutched the pain in my belly and ran toward the door. An army was coming.

Annie’s lilt chased me through the corridor. So did Jesse and Roark.

At the platform, Roark’s arm blocked my advance. “Aw Jaysus, your eyes.”

I didn’t give a shit how freaky my eyes looked. I fisted his cassock. “There’s an army outside. Help me stop them.”

His muscles stiffened. “Damn the devil’s hairy bollocks.”

Jesse stood next to him, brows drawn and jaw jerking. I snapped my fingers in his face. “I’ll need you, too.”

Roark’s sword swooshed as he slid it from his leather scabbard. “Get bloody on with it then.”

We united with Tallis and Georges on the balcony and updated them as we flew down the tunnel. I shed my coat and top as I ran. Roark and Jesse did the same.

The ringing in my gut whirled in a circular motion and spun up my spine. How many spots would I walk away with? Oh hell, I just needed to walk away.

“
Alis volat propriis,”
Georges panted at my back. “They say you fight like them, Spotted Wing. I will
savourer le show
.”

I huffed and burst through the door. Sweet lord, it was so cold I had to force my limbs to cooperate.

Across the field, two aphids looked up from a hollowed out body turned on its side. Daylight shined through the hole in the chest. Long blond hair swam around it. Goddammit. Ivar? His son?

One aphid snarled. The other clicked back. Their orbs turned to me.

Human screams rode in on the wind and my bones shivered.

“Stay with her, Beckett,” Roark said. “Tallis and Georges with me.” They darted for the river, where the shrieks quieted.

Oh, Roark. His name jumped into my throat and died there. He could handle himself. He’d come back.

Hundreds of insectile bodies shimmered on the horizon. A mile away? I trained the carbine on the two feeding. Could I hit the eyes at that distance? Jesse’s feathered arrows shifted in the quiver on his bare back.

“Give me an arrow, Jesse.”

He scowled at me.

“Can you make the kill shot from here?”

“Can’t you hold them while I run over there?” he asked.

“And give the army time to move closer?” I held out my hand.

He plucked out an arrow and pressed it into my waiting palm.

I punched the ice pick tip into the crease of my elbow. The burn reached my fingertips.

“You’re mad,” Jesse said.

Blood flowed onto the point. Then I handed it back to the still scowling Lakota. “You don’t have to hit the eyes. Trust me.”

He nocked the arrow and let it fly. It pierced the widest target, the chest of the closest one. The bulging body jerked. A flickering current danced through me.

The aphid flopped to the ground and exploded in a fountain of innards.

The remaining bug raised a claw. It snapped and snarled with quivering jaws. The approaching army stopped.

A howl barreled next me. Jesse was actually laughing. I wanted to laugh with him until I saw Roark sprinting back, his face twisted in rage.

“Beckett,” he yelled. “It’s Ivar, his sons.”

Jesse stilled beside me. “They’re all dead.”

Roark skidded before us. “Something like that. I’m sorry.”

My heart sank.

“Evie?” Michio’s voice turned me around. He scanned the horizon then my face. “How are you holding them?”

I shook my head. “I’m not. They’re nervous. It won’t last. What about the nymph? Did it work?”

My answer shuffled out of the door behind him. Njall carried his wife, both squinting in the sun. Her face was sallow and her arms hung, but blue irises glowed in her human eyes.

“It worked,
Nannakola
. Just one injection of your blood and Frida’s human genes reactivated. She’s confused…doesn’t remember anything since the infection took over. I’ll run some tests—”

Whoosh. Whoosh.

My stomach turned over violently. A cold voice swept up my spine.
Eveline.

I jerked up my head. From out the sky, a black form shot toward us. Waspy wings blurred in flight. Muscles jerked under a soaring sable cape. Claws and teeth shot out.

My guardians appeared in front of me, weapons raised. But the Drone’s onyx eyes were locked on Frida. His body turned in mid-air and Njall screamed.

Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.

Douglas Adams,
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING

Frida’s cries joined Njall’s as they rolled away from the outstretched talons of the swooping shadow.

The Drone landed in a crouch, wings tucking under his cape, his body blocking the door to the lab and Njall’s intended escape.

Njall scrambled back, regained his footing, and half-walked, half-ran toward the waterfalls, his gait hindered by Frida’s limp body bouncing in his clutch.

I drew myself up as tall as I could and sighted the carbine around the swell of muscle flexing against me. I steadied the aim on his chest. Squeeze.

The bullet skidded somewhere behind him as he rose from a crouched position he hadn’t been in two seconds before. “Try harder.”

Exhale. Squeeze.

That one pinged off the door. He stood beside it, the sun ringing his black eyes in red, their maddened depths locked on the lumbering escapees. “She’s human.” A hiss pushed past his fanged jaws. “So why is she emitting a pulse like one of my own?” He cocked his head. “It’s residual. Fading.” He bored his eyes into mine and floated forward. “There’s only one explanation.”

Jesse’s bow stretched beside his cheek. ”Back the fuck up.” His arrow plinked off the rock wall, missing the Drone’s sidestepping blur.

A blast of wind grabbed hold of the Drone’s cloak and thrashed it against his boots. “You murdered my brother, Eveline.”

Roark raised his sword in a two-handed grip. “Aw now, me girl might’ve taken the ballbeg’s knob, but ’twas me who relieved him of his cranium.”