by Pam Godwin
For a tough guy, he could whine like a little girl. Though I probably should’ve given him a warning before I’d yanked the arrow from his chest. It wasn’t a fatal injury. The spiders would have had to hit his brain to make me worry.
But I did worry. Every time he and Roark raced into battle without me, my insides hemorrhaged. It had been my turn to stay behind with Dawn, and I hated that. We were meant to fight together and die together. I’d barely survived Evie’s death. I didn’t have the strength to bear theirs.
I set the arrow aside and rubbed a hand over my face. Jesse was in pain, and all I’d offered him was a clinical glance and a harsh grip on his neck while I ripped out the metal shaft.
Of the four of us, Evie had always been the softer one. Without her mitigation, we tended to deal with our problems shoving and growling like a pack of wolves. Any gentleness that remained in us was reserved for Dawn.
If Evie were here, she would’ve molded her body around Jesse, kissed his lips, and told him she loved him.
I only did those things when I was hard and hungry. With my fangs in his neck.
Maybe he needed a hug? I opened my arms and tried to stifle my grin.
“Fuck off, Doc.” His annoyance sharpened his glare. “Just stop the bleeding. I’ve got shit to do.”
Roark sat beside him, blood dripping from multiple bite marks, his face a grimace of pain. “Dawn, do your da a favor and grab the whiskey in the galley.”
She jumped up from her squat beside Darwin, determination shining in her golden-green eyes. Evie’s eyes.
I grasped her tiny wrist, stopping her retreat. “His drink can wait. Put your hand here.” Guiding her fingers over the hole in Jesse’s chest, I pressed firmly. “Can you hold it?”
“Of course, I can.” Her jaw set, and she stared up at me with the gaze of an old soul, but her youth was unmistakable in her musical voice, the dusting of freckles on her nose, and the way her free hand twirled the coppery lock of her hair.
At the age of six, she’d seen more blood and death than I had as a thirty-year-old doctor before the plague. But she was fearless, ambitious, and stubborn. Just like her mother. Her gentle laugh, enthusiasm in learning, the confident way she carried herself, so many things about her reminded me of Evie. The similarities anchored me. She was like an extension of Evie’s soul, and I needed that connection.
I moved to the mess that was Jesse’s leg and carefully picked out the artillery shell fragments from his skin and muscle. “How many spiders this time?”
Our luxury four-bedroom yacht resided on Lake Mead, a speedboat’s ride along the Colorado River to the dam. We moved out of the dam two months after Evie’s death, fixed up the largest boat on the one-hundred-mile lake, and made it our home. We’d sunk all other watercraft and prevented trespassers from breaching the towering jagged bluffs surrounding our waters.
When we needed reinforcements, our men at the dam came within seconds of our blaring siren. And vice versa, like this morning.
I lifted Dawn’s hand from Jesse’s chest. The bleeding had stopped, the hole sealing with new skin.
“Several hundred spiders.” Jesse laced his fingers through Dawn’s on his chest. “They broke through the dam’s barricades again.”
Which explained the multitude of wounds and bite marks.
Dawn’s eyes widened. “Is Eddie okay?”
Roark unraveled her fingers from her hair, her tiny hand disappearing in his grip as he guided her onto his lap. “Eddie’s fine, lass.”
While I worked in the lab at the dam every day, she spent those hours with Eddie, the oldest of Shea’s three children. Shea provided them with a strict curriculum. Jesse and Roark taught them weaponry. But in the evenings, Dawn learned hand-to-hand combat under my tutelage.
I pried the last of the shrapnel from Jesse’s leg and sat back on my heels. “Fatalities?”
“We lost eight men and three women.” Jesse rose stiffly and gestured toward Dawn. “Let’s go clean you up.”
As I watched them retreat, hand in hand, through the kitchen and down the hall, I agonized over his words.
Eleven people was a huge hit. Seventy-five men and women resided at the dam. Only a handful had volunteered to receive the vaccine I’d spent the past six years developing. The serum worked the same way my bite did, but without the intimacy of orgasm. It prevented the infection of the spider programming and could easily be reproduced and distributed across the continents. But like the spider’s bite, the side-effect was infertility.
The nymphs were cured, and the aphids had been exterminated. Worldwide, there hadn’t been a reported sighting of either in years. But every day, spider babies were delivered into the world, growing fangs within hours after birth and biting their parents. The vicious infection was overrunning the planet with mindless, vampiric creatures, outnumbering us three to one. Their numbers were growing. Those who still had freewill were desperate to keep it. The horror stories I’d heard about mothers performing abortions on themselves kept me awake most nights.
But I couldn’t disperse a vaccine that would create an infertile species. Not after Evie gave her life for the future of humanity.
Roark hadn’t moved, his green eyes roaming my face. “Den’ give up, Doc.” He shifted, kneeling before me, gripped the back of my neck, and brought his forehead to mine. “Den’ give up on us. Jesse and I…we’re right here.”
I closed my eyes and grasped his shoulder. “I know.”
“Den’ give up on our girl either.”
Fierce conviction snapped through my voice. “Never.”
The problem was, our beautiful daughter, who had endured six years of my poking, swabbing, plasma-drawing examinations, was as normal and human as her best friend, Eddie. I’d ingested her blood from vials and still couldn’t sense her aura like I could with Jesse and Roark. Her blood didn’t cure programmed spiders. She was immune to the programming but didn’t have fangs or spots or superhuman speed. She had the power to make my heart swell, but did she have the power to save mankind?
I could analyze physical things, such as inherited conditions derived from DNA, molecular function, and interactions among genes. But I couldn’t use the scientific method to prove she was the solution we were waiting for.
Prophecy was a concept that correlated to faith, which was something that couldn’t be studied under a microscope or grown in a petri dish. I just had to believe. As a man of science, that was something I struggled with on a daily basis.
Maybe she would eventually grow into her power. Or maybe something significant would trigger it the way the virus had set off Evie’s biological changes.
Dawn was defined as the moment after which the sky was no longer completely dark. Until that moment, when she was ready to rise, my job was to protect her, train and prepare her, and love her.
That night, I sat on the edge of her bed beside Jesse. Roark stretched out on the other side, with Dawn tucked into the blankets between us. Darwin curled up at her feet, but he would move to her side the moment we left the room.
The soft slapping sound of water against the hull floated in through her window. A candle’s flame swayed lazily on her bedside table. Darwin’s steady snores vibrated the mattress. All was peaceful, warm, real. This was my favorite part of every day.
Jesse adjusted the blankets around her sweet little chin. “I love you.”
Roark and I echoed him.
“Love you, too.” Her eyes drifted closed, her auburn lashes fanning over her cheeks. Then she popped them open. “Will I see Eddie tomorrow?”
Roark pressed his lips to her forehead. “You’ll be kissing him again by sunrise.”
“Yuck.” She scrunched her nose then leveled us with a curious look. “Who did Mommy kiss the mostest?”
“The most.” I leaned over her, bracing an arm on the other side of her legs. “What do you mean?”
Her brows stitched together. “Which of you did she love the best?”
I rubbed the back
of my head and looked at Jesse. “I’m not touching that.”
Jesse stared at Roark, who was grinning like an asshole.
She shifted her sleepy gaze to me. “I bet she kissed you the mostes— The most because you’re the prettiest.”
“Be the love of the lamp lighting Jaysus, that’s a load of bollix.” Roark rolled to his back and said to the ceiling, “She’s craictose intolerant, that one.”
She giggled and poked a finger against his mouth. “Did Mommy talk funny like you?”
“No, baby.” Jesse leaned against the headboard. “Your mother could actually form words and make sense.” He closed his eyes. “And she was by far the prettiest.”
I could still see her in my mind, every perfect inch of her. One of my biggest fears was losing that image. We didn’t have photographs to trace or recordings to listen to. What if my memories faded? What if I couldn’t picture her anymore?
A heavy silence fell around us, and I knew Jesse and Roark were thinking about her, too.
We had good days and bad days. For years, I blamed myself for her death, anguished over all the things I could’ve done differently that morning in the garden. Guilt eventually morphed into acceptance and settled on purpose. I strived to be a good father, to be an emotional and physical support for Jesse and Roark, and to help the people. Her people.
Evie hadn’t left me as a hollow shell. She’d made me a better man.
I bent toward Dawn’s face and kissed her nose. “Whose turn is it to tell a story?”
She turned toward Roark and pulled on his beard. “It’s yours, Da. Tell me another one about England.”
“Let’s see…” Roark settled in, pulling her back against his chest, his finger stroking the medallion around her neck. “One time, your ma and I sought safety in a bank vault. ‘Twas barely big enough to hold the two of us. Aphids surrounded us, prying at the door, trying to claw their way in.”
Thirty minutes later, she was asleep. We kissed her good-night, slipped from her room, and wordlessly went our separate ways. We all had our own bedrooms with king-sized beds, where we each attempted to retire alone every night. But eventually, always, they showed up in my room.
We hadn’t slept apart since before Evie died.
In my room, I lit the waiting candles. We had a generator but used the power sparingly. Besides, the flickering flames soothed me. I’d spent most of my nights with Evie beneath the soft glow of a flame. I was glad for its light now.
I stripped down to my briefs and reached for my lab notes, but as I stared at my scrawl, the words blurred. All I saw was her. I pictured her with a rifle raised in her small hands, her beautiful blonde hair whipping around her face. I pictured her surrounded by nymphs, her arms out in supplication, letting them sip the cure from her veins. I pictured her standing among thousands of people at the dam, giving them hope through her selfless words.
I saw her naked, and once the image of her full breasts and round ass formed in my mind, I couldn’t summon the memories of her wearing clothes. She was nude aiming her bow. Nude running the tunnels. Nude rocking against my body.
Blinking, I tried to push those thoughts from my mind. I couldn’t go down that heartbreaking path. But I’d already shoved my briefs down my thighs, my cock in my hand, engorged, aching. I buckled over, stroking, twisting my grip, remembering her graceful neck, rosy nipples, quickening breaths, and full lips. She licked those lips, the soft wet flesh made for my kiss, my cock. Like her cunt. Tight, warm, drenched, gripping my fingers, sucking my shaft inside. I was in her, fucking her, kicking my hips and grunting like an animal.
My lungs strained for air, my arm jerking, shaking. I came and stared blankly at the wet streams of my need dripping over my thigh. Emptiness swept through me. It was always the same. I fucked my hand, thinking about her, but the hole remained vacant. I couldn’t fill it. Not without them.
The warm hum of their approach vibrated beneath my skin. I looked at the door, watched it open, waited as Jesse and Roark joined me on the bed.
No one said a word. I couldn’t read their thoughts, but I didn’t need to. Their emotions, desires, and fantasies were mirrors of mine.
I crawled toward them, made them groan, tremble, and muffle their relief into the pillows, as I poured my love into their bodies. They filled everything left barren by the loss of Evie, quenched the veins that no longer pumped with her blood, and squeezed my heart with something different, but no less intense. I always thought of her when I jerked off. But when I was with them, my thoughts were as well. Like now, lying between them with my arms around Roark and my legs entwined with Jesse’s.
They were my warmth when the chill of grief enveloped me. They were my voice when I couldn’t find the words. They were my legs when I struggled to stand back up. And I endeavored to be the same for them.
Jesse never saw Evie’s spirit again after that morning in the garden, but he still looked for her. Roark never put his cassock back on, but he still prayed. And I hadn’t scientifically proved Dawn would save the future of mankind. But I believed.
I believed in her.
To my critique group—Author Dana Griffin, Author Lindsey R. Loucks, Lindy Winter, Jill Bitner, Ann White, Kathryn Sparrow—for trawling your way through this 200k+ word beast. Your talent as writers inspires and encourages me. I adore you and your amazing stories.
To my street team, the Freedom Fighters, you are my sounding board, my pulse on the reading community, and my passionate pimpers. Thank you for listening to me, supporting me, and being so fucking awesome. I don’t know what I’d do without you.
To Author Barbara Elsborg, for your brilliant advice and endless support. I will forever and always be your biggest fan girl.
To my proofreader, Lesa Godwin, for your immaculate eyes. I don’t know how you do it, but once again you’ve removed every last error in another mammoth book in record time. Thank you for allowing me to depend on you so thoroughly.
To my best friend, Amber, for always making time for me in the midst of your crazy life. I can’t express how important your friendship is to me.
To my son, daughter, and husband, for accepting my ungodly work hours, for eating Chipotle for dinner (again), and for waiting…always waiting, for me to turn off the computer. You make it possible to do what I love and I hope to return the favor someday.
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author, Pam Godwin, lives in the Midwest with her husband, their two children, and a foulmouthed parrot. When she ran away, she traveled fourteen countries across five continents, attended three universities, and married the vocalist of her favorite rock band.
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
DAWN OF EVE (Trilogy of Eve #3)
Coming 2016
Other Books by Pam Godwin
Beneath the Burn
Deliver (Deliver #1)
Vanquish (Deliver #2)
Dirty Ties
Take the Heat (Anthology)
