Dead of Eve (Trilogy of Eve)
Page 40
Michio’s silken voice brushed over my back. “He’s gone, Nannakola.”
I rolled over and hugged him. “Tell me you’re okay.”
He looked up at me, his smile brimming his gorgeous eyes, a hand clasped to his throat. “Just a bug bite.”
“Did my stoic warrior just make a joke?” I rubbed my breastbone where it tingled. “How does one fight monsters and still look so damn beautiful?”
A scarlet flood drowned out his pallor. He shifted me up his chest, the movement sluggish. “You would know.”
The stomp of boots burst from the tunnel. Strong arms dragged me to my feet, the essence of oak enveloping me. Beyond Roark’s broad shoulders, Jesse lingered in the shadows.
Seeing them returned some strength to my wobbly legs. Dammit, my arms itched to wrap around them and hold on tight. But if I did that, even for brief moment, I’d fall apart. So, I dropped my hand to my cocked hip and said, “About time you showed up.”
A clump of gore plopped from Roark’s sword, at odds with his flirtatious eyes as they roamed my face with too much perception. He grinned. “Been a little busy, love.”
I wanted to give into my own smile, but, “Georges and Tallis? Darwin?”
Michio gripped Roark’s offered hand and stood. “Guarding the entrance.” His scorching lips found mine, caressing, lingering. “Let’s go home.”
My eyebrows climbed up my forehead. “Home? Where’s that?”
Jesse stepped away from the wall. “Nymph Mountain.”
Nymph Mountain. Where we could deliver the cure and save a life. Where we could heal under Akicita’s care.
Jesse held my gaze. “Say yes, Evie.”
The lazy roll of lava pushed between the canyon banks, its surface burnished and undisturbed. I limped toward the tunnel, lips in full tilt. “Yes, Evie.”
The nymph’s cabin emitted an eerie calm. Its interior was ominous through the small window despite the glare of the late sun. Having been neglected by my ghosts since leaving Iceland, I shuddered at the memory of how I stumbled upon the isolated shack. Aaron loitering on the porch. His blood-drenched Booey clutched to my chest like a talisman.
A month had passed since the Drone’s fall. We carried a heavy burden on that walk back to the gunship. The weight of our gear. The deaths of our friends. But we also carried a cure, a hope that pushed us forward.
The gunship made one stop on its flight to the states. Georges knew of an underground supply of jet fuel in St. John’s, Newfoundland. From there, we flew to Camp Dawson, West Virginia and purloined another Hum-vee. Jesse led us through the Allegheny Mountains without compass or map. When we reached the foothill, I too remembered the trails to the sandstone wall that towered the tiny shack.
“Looks empty.” Roark leaned on his sword and rubbed the stubble roughening his cheek.
Small animal carcasses, fresh and old, scattered the porch and lawn. “She’s here.” Besides, she wouldn’t have left her children. “She’ll feel threatened if we go in. I’ll try to call her out.”
Michio stepped before me, armed with the capture gun loaded with my blood. “Please be careful.” He kissed me.
Ow. I pulled back, touched my mouth. Blood dotted my fingers. I reached up and peeled back his lip. Normal human teeth.
His tongue swiped out, caught the bead of blood on my finger. Something flashed in his eyes. What the fuck? He backed up and walked to the cabin.
“Wha’ in under feck was that?” Roark asked from my side.
“Glad you saw it. For a second, I thought I was having a flashback.”
“Ready?” Michio shouted from his position behind a tree.
Roark curled his tall frame around my back. Jesse slipped in front of me, his back to my chest, his arrow ready. Tallis, Georges and Darwin walked the perimeter.
Swaddled by skin, I felt my energy gather. Then I called the nymph from her damnation. Come.
After a few patient pushes, she loomed in the doorway. I bathed the link in consoling thoughts. Her feet slid over the rotten boards, creaking them as she stepped off the porch.
Michio released the dart. It struck her throat and she clawed at it, wailing.
“Evie?” Roark’s voice behind me.
She thrashed on the ground, her fear stabbing my gut. I released the connection. “I’m fine. Go help Michio restrain her.”
Roark held her as Michio checked her vitals and sedated her with Kampo herbs. She would survive the reversal. She’d have a doctor and guards to ensure it.
Overcome with a heavy weight in my chest, I paced away, pulling out my music player and adjusting the buds in my ears.
A sharp draft bumped up my skin. Jesse’s fingers slid over mine. At the tree line, Annie and Aaron flickered, took shape, holding hands in their pajamas. I schooled my breathing.
Aaron leapt forward. Annie grabbed the shirt of her runaway brother. He giggled as she tucked him under her arm. The human gesture made it difficult to remember they were just the remnant energy of my children’s memories.
I covered the distance between us, Jesse at my side.
“Mama,” Annie trumpeted through a stifled yawn. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Jesse smiling at her.
“The day is over,” she said. “We have to go nighty-night.”
A sharp stab burned in my chest. It was an innocent comment. Still, her tone held finality. “What do you mean, sweetheart?”
She shrugged. “We have to go, but Dada says we’ll see you again someday.”
Their forms faded and solidified again. Then they vanished.
Gone. I waved my arms around me and strained my eyes, searching the air, aching to feel, to see a remnant of their presence. There were no dissolving bones, no animated inferno, no blustering vortex. They were just…gone. I dropped to my knees and screwed my eyes shut. Air pushed from my lungs in heavy rasps. They were dead, I reminded myself. I watched them die.
I curled my nails in the loose dirt. Directed my thoughts to the earth. Away from the need to scream their names. I wanted to hold them and never let them go.
When I opened my eyes, a solid frame blocked my view. Jesse pulled me to his chest. He held me as the air crackled around us, as the synergy of their memories dissipated into the surrounding realm of living things.
I sucked in a deep breath. It was warm, lively, as if their energy had melded with the oxygen I inhaled. “They’re gone,” I whispered.
“We all have a responsibility to the earth.” Jesse held me tighter. “What we take from it in life, we give back in death. When you feel a snowflake on your cheek, when you hear the whisper of the wind at your back, when you see the ribbons of mist hovering a pond, you’ll know it’s them. Their energy. One blood.”
I released a choppy breath. When the wind blew back, I wondered.
Jesse turned me to face the western horizon where the afterglow of the sun’s departure lit up the mountains. His lips moved at my ear. “Just like day and night, we heed the seasons of birth, life and rebirth.”
Unearthing the mysteries of life and death was an unobtainable wish. I walked so many roads in two years. Left behind so many dead. Made so many mistakes, beginning with Joel’s death. Then the young sailor, Ian. And Frida. Oh God, she was so close to happiness.
The music player powered on beneath my restless fingers and I queued up Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind. Jesse’s palm tapped my hip as if he could hear the croon from my ear buds.
A shadow fell over my lap. “It worked,” Michio mouthed, eyes glittering. He sat at my side, Roark at the other. Their hands settling on my knees.
Jesse’s heart beat against my back. Near the cabin, Tallis cradled the woman’s head in his lap. A faint smile creased her face in sleep. One cured woman gave me no illusions of salvation, but for one day, it was enough. The sun would return and when it did, we’d begin again. Humanity might be dependent on the most unlikely of heroes, but I had the Yang to my Yin, the Adam to my Eve. Three guardians. Three reasons to care, to
fight, to live.
Together we watched the sun bow below the horizon in veneration for the eve that followed. The eve of the beginning.
5000 miles away…
A symphony of unearthly cries blanketed the island, l’Isola del Vescovo. At the center of the Mediterranean, there was nowhere for them go, nothing for them to eat. But their resilient bodies wouldn’t starve. The aphids would roam the confines of the water’s edge in an endless haze of hunger. And across the ocean, when the last mammal on Earth released its last breath, aphid cries would consume every island, every continent. But there was little concern for that.
Labored breaths sawed in and out of ruined lungs. The voice was an abrasion, scratching the raw tissue of an unhealed esophagus. “Forgive me, brother. I failed us.”
The Drone fingered the silken webbing that covered the wall of his lab. “But I will fix this. My messengers will find her again, and when they do—”
Agony ripped through his midsection where the boils festered and wheezed. More velvet threads spun forth and wove around the hanging cocoon.
Nerve endings throbbed beneath charred skin as he willed his feet to slide toward the wall.
“When they find her,” he rasped, stroking what was left of his brother’s moldering scalp, “she will offer herself like Allah Almighty willed it, and finally we will live in perfect harmony.”
Gossamer threads suspended his brother’s disembodied head at eye level. The zigzag scar was the only recognizable feature in his decomposed face.
Red clouded his vision. He slowed his rising heart rate with measured breaths and side-stepped to the web-wrapped husk swaying beside the head. The effort ripped pangs through his dermis and into underlying muscle and bones.
“My wings will heal and they will be stronger, more durable than before.” Their newly acquired armored exterior had sheltered his body from the worst of the burns and carried him to the passageway tucked beneath the overhang he fell from.
Her blood gave him that indestructibility, by way of the Icelandic woman. Imagine what he would become if he drank from her directly. But to catch the fly, he must heal. He must feed.
He summoned the strength to climb the cocoon, his claws and feet clinging to the sticky strands. When he reached the neck, his fangs pierced through layer after layer of diaphanous netting, sinking into the leathery flesh beneath. Then he drained the remains of his brother’s carcass.
Trilogy of Eve
Dead of Eve
Blood of Eve
Dawn of Eve
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my friends at critiquecircle.com, for smacking me over the head with the writing rulebook, and for telling me to ignore the rules when they get in the way.
To John Pfannkuchen, for teaching me the importance of writing a novel not to be read, but writing one to be read again and again.
To Lindsey R. Loucks, for turning every page of my embarrassing first draft. Your succinct and timely critiques showed me how to strip to my briefs and get to the point.
To J. Andrew Jansen, for protecting Evie’s butt-kicking manly men from becoming hunched shouldered, purse-holding, standing outside the women’s restroom men.
To C.K. Raggio, for calling out my awkward phrasing, and for cheering Evie from beginning to end. I want to design an Evie Halloween costume just for you.
To David Bridge, for editing my American English, for advising me on the nuances of regional vocabulary within the U.K., and for not kicking my arse if inaccuracies remain. Any misrepresentations of Irish slang are entirely my fault.
To Lindy Winter, for showing me where my brevity worked against me, and for drafting my blurb when brevity was beyond me.
To Dana Griffin, for your “The Between Chapter” reflections. Your ingenuous thoughts and generous nudging kept the fire burning under my ass.
To my husband, for being my inspiration in Joel’s creation. I hope his character is a worthy portrayal of you.
About the Author
Pam Godwin lives in Missouri with her husband, their two children, and a foulmouthed parrot. When she ran away at eighteen, she traveled fourteen countries across five continents, attended three universities, and married the vocalist of her favorite rock band. Now, she resides in her hometown, earning her living as a portfolio analyst, and living her yearning as a writer.
Java, tobacco, and dark romance novels are her favorite indulgences, and might be considered more unhealthy than her aversion to sleeping, eating meat, and dolls with blinking eyes.
You can follow her at pamgodwin.com
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: HANDPRINT
CHAPTER TWO: FRAILTY, THY NAME IS WOMAN
CHAPTER THREE: THERAPY
CHAPTER FOUR: APRIL FOOL
CHAPTER FIVE: DO NOT LOOK BACK
CHAPTER SIX: GLOW OF THE ETERNAL PRESENT
CHAPTER SEVEN: DIGIT RATIO
CHAPTER EIGHT: CONTRITION
CHAPTER NINE: UNTIL YOU HATE ME
CHAPTER TEN: END OF MY ROPE
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE LETTER
CHAPTER TWELVE: DARWIN
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: SEVERED TONGUES
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SPOTTED WING
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LA VIDA LAKOTA
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TEA LEAVES
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: 20x8x8
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: FISH N CHIPS
CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE GOSPEL BLADE
CHAPTER TWENTY: THREE GATES
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: A NUN’S TITS
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: A COWARD HAS NO SCAR
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: REBELS OF THE SACRED HEART
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE ROAD TO TRUTH
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: FLYPAPER
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: L’ISOLA DEL VESCOVO
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: SUBLIMITY
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: THE ABYSS GAZED BACK
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: FILLET OF SOUL
CHAPTER THIRTY: WINDING STAIR
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: FEAR WHAT IS NOT UNDERSTOOD
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: BROKEN WINGS
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: EROS’ NEEDLE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: INEXHAUSTIBLE ENERGY
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: TAP OUT
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: THE BREACH
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN: RISE IN PERFECT LIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT: REASON
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: THE ARC
CHAPTER FORTY: MIND, BODY, AND SOULFUR
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: CONNECT THE DOTS
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO: LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING
Acknowledgements
About the Author