by Pam Godwin
He dragged me off the ledge and tore his mouth from my neck. The caverns of his black eyes stirred to life, sharpening and glinting with the promise of vengeance. The sinews in his neck stretched, and a series of twitches raced across his arms and chest, his strength flexing and tightening.
Slumped against the wall and unable to move in my restraints, all I could do was watch, mesmerized, as he regained control of his body.
His teeth clamped together, and his lips retracted, exposing red-stained fangs. He threw his head back, and his cheeks puffed with the violent escape of a roar. The guttural resonance penetrated my chest in a silken explosion, his rage thrumming through my bones and pebbling goosebumps along my skin.
He was magnificent and terrifying, and holy shit, I was so glad that anger wasn’t aimed at me.
Michio spun, but his target was already charging. The Drone’s cape fell to the ground, and his wings snapped out. He blurred around Michio, his vicious eyes locked on me.
My heart raced as I tried to hobble away from the ledge, but I hadn’t managed a single inch before he collided with my body and flipped me head first off the side.
The ground disappeared, replaced by air and the dizzily whirl of the canyon walls. I was sinking. Oh God, I was falling, and there was nothing to catch me but…fate.
Michio’s pained roar followed me over as I left my stomach, my breath, and my heart on the ledge.
My pulse hurdled past my ears as I fell head first into the Black Canyon. Indescribable fear exploded in my chest and spilled out in an anguished cry. The torment was unbearable, knowing I wasn’t the only one dying. I would’ve sacrificed my life for the future of humanity, but she was plummeting with me, bound to my womb and my fate.
Michio’s roar thundered through the gorge, and my insides tore apart at the sound. Bloody tears streaked from my eyes, carried away by the whipping wind. I’d only fallen a few yards, yet it had lasted an eternity.
Before I could contemplate the remaining seven-hundred feet, the ropes snapped against me, pinching my skin and wrenching the air from my lungs. My feet continued to plunge for a half-second as my torso jerked upright and slammed against the concrete wall.
I came to a sudden halt, suspended sixty-some stories in the air. I gasped at the jarring pain in my bones, my head spinning with disorientation, and jerked my chin skyward.
The nylon around me cinched and pulled toward a knotted point at my back. From there, the extra length of rope reached ten…twenty feet up and disappeared over the concrete ledge.
The fibers creaked as I twisted and swayed. Holy fuck, I was caught. For now. Had Michio grabbed the rope or did it snag on something? Oh God, how long would it hold?
All that training Jesse had put me through wouldn’t help me now, not without the use of my limbs. The bindings from my ankles to my biceps had been tied in a way that distributed my weight, the loops around my upper thighs and pelvis providing a makeshift seat that didn’t put pressure on my womb. Michio had planned this, or at the very least, prepared for it. But how did he do it while the Drone was infiltrating his thoughts?
The vibrant hum of his aura stroked through my skin. I mentally traced the invisible trail, following his warmth up the wall and over the ledge. He was still up there, still alive. What happened to the Drone? He’d been right behind me when he pushed me over. Had Michio hauled him back? Were they tearing each other limb from limb?
I couldn’t help him. My pulse sprinted. Fuck, I couldn’t protect him.
The rope jerked, and I bumped against the wall, squinting against the blinding sun, refusing to remove my eyes from my lifeline. Who or what was holding the other end?
A black wing blurred over the wall then snapped out of view. The rope pulled, hitching me up then sliding free, plunging me downward and collapsing my stomach, as it dragged sideways along the edge.
The cord snapped taut again, stopping my downward spiral and whooshing the air from my lungs. Was Michio holding it? While he was fighting the Drone and the spiders?
My heart hammered as I strained my hearing, listening for pained grunts or scuffing boots.
Silence closed in around me. I expected to see the Drone’s sinister eyes emerge over the ledge at any moment, followed by the stretch of his wings and the swipe of his talons as he severed the rope. I waited, my throat constricting and my breath slipping.
Something jerked the cord, bouncing me up and down and side to side like a swinging yo-yo. It yanked and slacked and yanked again, the nylon rubbing along the ledge and back, fraying the threads from the friction. Whatever secured the other end wasn’t stationary.
My funny bone slammed against the cement, shooting pinpricks through my arm. The disorientation was nauseating as I spun again. None of my limbs were free to buffer the constant collisions against wall, but I tried to keep my head angled as my spine and shoulders took the brunt of the abuse.
A black shoe appeared on the ledge, joined by its twin. The Drone rose up, towering above me as he stood on the wall. Crimson rivulets dripped from the gouges in his melted face, his black shirt and pants shredded, exposing bloody gashes beneath. He turned, and his furious eyes locked on the rope.
No, no, no! My chest heaved, and my mouth stretched to scream when something whistled above my head.
The Drone staggered, his gruesome visage contorting with outrage as he stared down at the black and red feathered arrow harpooned in his chest.
“Jesse.” My whisper came out shaky, breathless, and full of stunned disbelief as I tried to whip around, frantically tracing the path the arrow had flown.
The Drone ripped the shaft free from his chest, tossed it, and launched for the rope.
But my lifeline was moving, yanking sideways, away from the Drone, and sliding downward…oh shit, it was loose, plummeting me into the gorge and shoving my guts to my throat.
I fell several heart-gripping feet before I crashed to a stop. I raised my head and found Michio, the source of my salvation, as he tackled the Drone’s back. The end of the rope coiled around his arm, cutting off his circulation and turning his skin red and blue. Blood smeared his face, his eyes and fangs feral, as his hands curled around the base of the Drone’s wing.
In the distance, shots rang out, followed by men shouting and cursing. Somewhere near the entrance of the dam? I didn’t know how Jesse and Roark had found me, but I was certain that it was them wreaking havoc on the Drone’s guards.
A guttural howl snapped my attention back to the Drone. Instead of standing on the ledge, he was now bent over it. He clawed at the wall, his cheek smashed against the concrete, and his eyes wide with… Panic? Fear?
Above his blood-soaked face, Michio leaned over and raised the skeletal arm of a torn-off wing. Hunks of flesh hung from the joint where it had been ripped from the Drone’s body.
Michio’s slivered eyes cut straight to me, piercing through my soul as if sharpened on the lethal edge of a blade. His expression was chillingly beautiful, like an ice storm, paralyzing and enchanting, the harsh lines of his bone structure hardening with brutality. No longer was his bearing frozen with indifference. He was malice and fangs and vicious strength, a blood-thirsty guardian angel.
With the end of my rope wrapped around one arm and chords of muscle flexing in his other, he flipped the wing in his hand and reared it back like a spear.
“Eveline.” The Drone’s fanged smile dripped with venom, his madness peering out of the darkness of his eyes. “Fate cannot be changed.”
His words shivered across my skin as Michio stabbed the clawed joint of the wing into the back of the Drone’s head.
The sound of crushing bone echoed through the canyon. The corner of the Drone’s frozen smile tented outward into a bubbled point, stretching the melted flesh of his face until the clawed tip burst through his cheek with a pop of blood and bone fragments. I saw the moment his life evaporated from his eyes and felt his insanity flicker out, releasing my insides from the black stain of his aura.
; Michio stared down at me as he thrust the bone of the wing again and again, ripping through brain tissue and splitting the skull. He held my gaze as he pushed harder, shoving the clawed tip out through the Drone’s gaping mouth. A landslide of red lumps dribbled over the Drone’s distended jaw.
Without looking away, Michio removed the gruesome weapon, shoved his hand into the back of the skull, and pulled out what was left of the Drone’s brain.
If he intended on eating that, there was a good chance I’d throw up and never kiss him again. Eating brains certainly wasn’t Michio’s style, but sweet mother, the terrifying look etched across his splattered face made me question the extent at which he was willing to go to ensure the Drone would never come back from the dead.
It wasn’t until he hurled the mangled brain into the gorge that he shifted his eyes away from mine and to the rope coiled around his other arm. I released a sigh of relief, so fucking ready to plant my feet on solid ground.
He left the Drone’s corpse hanging over the ledge, and sidled a few feet away from it to hoist me up. His blood-slicked hands flew over the nylon and closed the distance between us. I ascended as quickly as I’d fallen, and in the next breath, his arms were around me, suffocating me in the intensity of his embrace.
The bodies of the spider guards scattered the pavement behind him, sightless and unmoving. The report of gunfire ricocheted every few seconds from the dam’s entrance, but the hum of the surviving spiders was dwindling. Our guys were winning. God, I had so many questions, but as Michio’s arms grew tighter around me, I decided all of it could wait. He needed this. I needed this.
My body instantly melted in his arms as I listened to the labored rasps of his breaths, captivated by the trembling in his muscles and the tornado of emotions storming across his face. He’d single-handedly given my daughter a future. In turn, he’d given the world a gift. There would never be enough words to tell him how thankful I was, but I would spend the rest of my life, however short that was, pursuing his happiness.
He carried me away from the ledge and toward the street, his boots squishing through the remains of aphids and stepping over the bodies of the six spiders. Some were missing eyes. Most of the heads were caved in as if a vengeful fist had crushed their faces and destroyed their brains.
“You killed all of them with your bare hands,” I said in numb awe, staring up at his blood-stained face. “While holding onto the rope.”
He settled me on the sidewalk and attacked the knots on my arms, freeing them with superhuman speed. “There’s thirty or forty more spiders at the gates.” He moved to the rope around my pelvis and legs, his breaths growing faster, louder, his voice throaty and clipped. “They have to die.”
Shit. Were they thinking on their own now? With the Drone no longer controlling them, what happened to their minds?
The commotion of gun shots and shouting at either end of the dam grew quieter by the second. A moment later, all I could hear was the sound of Michio’s heavy breathing.
The final knot fell away from my arms, and I snapped them up, reaching for him. But he jerked away, moving down my legs to fumble with the remaining rope. A tremor bunched through his shoulders, and a seething hiss pushed past the clench of his fangs. He was still so very angry, his skin stretching to contain the torment churning inside him.
I couldn’t take his pain away, but I could relieve at least one of his worries. “I felt the spiders humming under my skin. You know, like the aphids, but different. But right now, the only hum left is yours. The spiders are dead, Michio. Are you able to feel that, too?”
He raised bloodshot eyes to my face, his hands shaking against the rope on my legs. “I’ve only ever been able to feel you. I’m the only one who can.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, his fingers smearing through the blood as he looked away. “I’m the only one who could track you.”
“How? Because of the venom?” I thought of the breeding facilities and the spiders that would likely be guarding those locations. “Can you track the spiders the way you track me? Or do you already know where the women are?”
“No.” His jaw set. “My ability to sense you has nothing to do with the venom. I don’t know where the women are, and the spiders can’t telepathically sense one another or me.” He pulled the last of the rope from my body and jumped to his feet, his fingers dragging over his scalp, his voice scathing with anger. “I can feel you because I consumed your blood.”
Oh. It made a convenient tracking device, which explained why the Drone had sent him to retrieve me from Missouri and why Michio was so bitter about being able to sense me.
I rose on shaky legs and stepped toward him, aching to wrap my arms around his rigid frame. But his brown eyes drilled into me, warning me to stay back. He glared as if the mere sight of me caused him deep pain.
My heart clenched with yearning, to comfort him. To protect him. I needed to reconnect with him on both a soulful and carnal level, but to do that, to reach him, we needed to scrape away all the regrets and heartache.
“Michio—”
A voice boomed in the distance, the familiar baritone echoing from somewhere near the entrance of the dam. “Whaaaaaaa-hoooo, motherfuckers!”
Link was here. Maybe Shea, too? A sense of peace settled over me. Despite Michio’s turmoil, the flutter in my chest told me everything was going to be okay.
“The Drone has hundreds, if not thousands of spiders across the country.” Michio turned away from me, facing the ledge, his hand gripping the back of his neck. “All of them are programmed to bite and breed until there are no humans left. The babies already conceived are programmed to do the same.” The guttural quake in his voice punched all the way to my core. “As you already know, these creatures are harder to kill than the aphids. And they can reproduce.”
I touched my belly and the future I held there, my mind spinning with questions about the women and the breeding. But the pain in Michio’s voice ran much deeper than the Drone’s plans.
“Michio, look at me.” I stepped closer, reaching for his back.
“Evie, I—” His shoulders hitched with the start of a sob, but he cut it off and spun away before my hand made contact with him.
Deep, nasty gashes covered his arms, neck, and bare chest. Most were already healing, but his physique was too thin, his skin too pale, and there was so much blood clinging to his body, he looked like he’d crawled out of the bowels of an exploding aphid.
His muscles twitched as he paced before me, his eyes flickering with fire and refusing to look at me. “I can’t—”
He pulled at his hair, crumpling over, and made a bone-rattling, keening noise in the back of his throat. Then he straightened, and his feet pounded the pavement as he resumed his furious pacing. Sinews stretched in his neck, his biceps contracting as he removed the remaining rope from his arm.
My eyes burned, and my hands trembled. He was working through something in his head, and I wasn’t sure whether to stop him with a hug or stand out of his way.
Another sob crawled from his throat, but he growled over it. “I can’t face this. I can’t…I can’t live with what I’ve done to you.”
I stepped in front him and placed my palms on his heaving chest. “You can’t face this? Me, standing right here, breathing and desperate to hold you? You can’t live with you being the reason I’m not splattered at the bottom of this cliff?”
Dark, haunting pain shadowed his face as he touched the gouges in my cheek. “I can’t face this.” His hand lowered to the puncture marks on my neck. “Or this.” He crouched, lowering until he was eye-level with my stomach, his hands separating the shredded strips of cotton to reveal the yellowish bruises on my torso.
“Michio—”
“I can’t live with this.” He reached out to touch the marks then yanked his hands away to gingerly hold my wrists, his dark eyes glaring at the raw skin from the shackles. “Or this,” he choked, his fingers moving to my belly and the life that grew there. “This…” His sob bro
ke free, and his shoulders curled forward with an abusive shudder as his forehead rested on my stomach. “This child…she’s going to…” He stared up at me, his tears streaking white lines through the blood on his face, his palms framing my flat belly. “She will be the end of us.”
“You’re wrong.” I squatted before him and cupped his stubborn jaw, my heart hurting and soaring at the same time. “She will be your beginning.” I pulled him against me, curling up in the power of his embrace. “This…this new world was never about me, Michio. She is your future.”
He tensed against me, the storm inside him vibrating and shaking, until finally, it exploded with a roar. “I drugged you, beat you, and locked you in a cage. All while you were pregnant!”
“Aiman did those things, dammit. And from what I can tell, it hurt you more than it hurt me or the baby.” I drew in a calming breath and narrowed my eyes. “Where’s Elaine?”
His teeth snapped together, the grief on his face buried beneath a fog of fury. “He sent her to one of the facilities this morning.” His eyes came back to mine. “He was going to let me follow you over the cliff. The only mercy he was willing to grant me.”
“Let you? Oh God, Michio.” I hugged him tightly, pushing my hand through his hair.
We had a long way to go to repair the damage, but as our bodies molded together, we eased into a synchronized, rhythmic sway of breaths. I had faith we’d eventually come out the other side whole.
I had at least eight months to heal him.
Eight months until she drew her first breath.
Eight months with my guardians.
“Evie!”
I leaned back, my gaze flicking in the direction of the familiar accent, my chest hitching with excitement.
Beyond the carnage of hundreds of aphids and backlit by the sun, a dozen silhouettes jogged up the road, headed toward us. Among the group, I could make out Roark’s broad shoulders and the arch of Jesse’s bow on his back.
Michio pressed his lips to my temple. “Go, Nannakola. I’ll be right here.”
