Dawn of Eve

by Pam Godwin

  Jeremy stiffened beside me. “Okay.”

  We turned as one, ran up the short flight of stairs, across the porch, and through the door. As I slammed it shut, I glimpsed the hybrid in the clearing. He hadn’t moved.

  My legs felt weak as I bolted the door. Four bolts, made of heavy metal and seemingly impenetrable. As I engaged each one, the cylinders echoed loudly, ramping up my pulse. If the residents didn’t know they had intruders, they certainly knew now.

  Turning, I found a large sitting area, a grand staircase, another sitting room through the doorway on the right, and three corridors that led deeper into the house. Strategically placed candles on the walls and tables illuminated the rooms in a soft glow.

  Jeremy held the blade out in front of him in a white-knuckled grip. “Where are they?”

  “Maybe it’s just one person. Someone more afraid of us than we are of him.”

  Then why were the hairs on my neck standing on end?

  A hint of staleness clung to the air. Thick layers of dust and cobwebs covered the furniture, wood floors, and unlit light fixtures. And the silence…sweet hell, it was eerily quiet. So quiet the absence of sound rang in my ears.

  “Hello?” My voice resounded off the crusty, cracked wallpaper.

  The answering silence shivered my skin. I hadn’t even taken a step from the front door, and I wanted to turn around and run out.

  “What’s your gut telling you right now?” I flexed my grip on the knife.

  “That it’s safer in here. And warmer.”

  It was definitely warmer. There must’ve been a fire burning somewhere. Or maybe it was the lack of gusty wind. Ironically, I was trembling harder in here than outside.

  “Okay.” I swallowed past a knot of fear. “I’m going to go look—”

  Something shifted in my periphery. Something low to the floor in the sitting room on the right. My mouth went dry.

  “Did you see that?” I nodded at the wide doorway.

  “No.” Jeremy’s voice wavered. “What was it?”

  The floor creaked, the disturbance coming from around the corner in that second room. A chill tiptoed over my shoulders. I didn’t move, didn’t blink, as I waited for another sound, questioning whether I’d imagined the first one.

  Minutes passed. The silence persisted for an eternity. The kind of terrifying silence that locked up the joints and stopped the heart.

  “Stay here where I can see you. I’m going to peek around the corner.” I adjusted my fingers around the knife and crept toward the sitting room.

  Sweat gathered between my breasts, and my heart thundered louder than my footsteps. I rounded the corner, and a quick scan of every nook and shadow confirmed no one was there.

  The room held all the same lavish furnishings. Ornate chairs and lamps and fancy impractical things. The couch alone looked like no one had sat on it in years. Blankets of dust covered the floors, tables, and seats. No fingerprints, footprints, or buttprints. Nothing had been disturbed.

  “I think I saw something.” Jeremy stepped forward, eyes glued straight ahead and blade held up, shaking in his hand.

  His next step shifted him out of my field of view, blocked by the wall between the rooms.

  “We need to stay together.” My nerves rioted, sparking tingles beneath my skin. “Come ba—”

  A shadow slithered across the floor by the front door. What the fuck?

  I stepped toward it, turned the corner, and met Jeremy’s stark eyes across the room. “What’s wrong?”

  “I think—”

  Something lunged from the floor in the shadowed hallway, swept his legs out from under him, and knocked him flat on his back.

  He screamed in agony, and his blade skittered under the couch. I bolted toward him, lungs heaving and boots slipping on clumps of snow. I couldn’t make out what attacked him, couldn’t stop it from dragging him down the corridor on his back like a rag doll.

  He twisted onto his stomach and scraped his fingers over the floor, his eyes locked on mine, silently begging. My stomach clamped. Nausea rose. I propelled forward, stumbling, reaching, separated by the length of the hall as he was ripped into another room. Legs first. Then his chest. The last thing I saw was his horrified expression before blood sprayed from the doorway. His severed head rolled into the corridor.

  “Noooo!” My hand flew to my throat, my entire body frozen in shock and unholy terror.

  For an eternal heartbeat, I stared at the head, shaking all over and gasping for air. This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.

  I turned and ran, frantically searching the floor for movement while slashing the blade around me.

  Two steps from the door, a sting burned through my neck. I pawed at the hurt, and my fingers brushed…something…shouldn’t be there. Why do I feel funny?

  Sudden dizziness sent me stumbling backward. A heavy weight invaded my limbs, and black spots flickered across my vision. My knees wobbled as I yanked the sharp object from my neck and held it close to my eyes, squinting through the blurriness.

  A dart.

  My face turned ice-cold. The floor rose up, and everything went black.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I woke in a fog of disorientation, my muscles so sluggish I couldn’t move despite the panic gripping my body. Lying on my side with my cheek against a soft surface, I fell back on my training. Eyes closed, breaths even, I feigned sleep and gathered my bearings.

  Silence spread over me like a corpse, chilling in its stillness. Or maybe it was the air. The subterranean temperature pressed against my exposed face and arms, the rest of my body swaddled in furs. I’d been unconscious long enough to generate a cocoon of body heat, but it didn’t stop my insides from trembling.

  My hands lay motionless in front of me, one on the bedding, the other curled against the cold hard floor. A damp earthy scent tickled my nose, conjuring images of underground caverns, deeply-dug graves, and dark enclosed places.

  My pulse roared as I fought to keep my eyelids closed and relaxed. Was I still in the mansion? A basement? My cloak, tunic, and boots had been removed. Suede still bound my breasts. The medallion I never removed hung against my sternum, the chain secure around my neck. But I couldn’t tell if the soft hides against my lower half were my leggings or whatever had been wrapped around me.

  I couldn’t feel the weight of my mother’s dagger or the familiar wood of my bow. Holding my breath, I listened again. Nothing. Who or what was I up against? I’d been drugged, my fathers didn’t know how to find me, and Jeremy was dead.

  Jeremy. Fucking hell, I couldn’t block out the image of his severed head.

  Since implementing the Resistance at age fifteen, I’d lost numerous soldiers, too many friends to count. But Jeremy’s death was still too fresh, too raw, every vivid detail violent and crippling. The shifting shadows, the speed and viciousness of the strike, his terrified eyes—all reminders that I was on my own, unarmed, and at the mercy of the mysterious thing that had butchered him.

  I swallowed back a helpless sob, my jaw locked in grief and loss and utter fear.

  Stop it!

  My head was still attached to my body. I was still alive. I could still escape the nightmare I’d ignorantly walked into.

  Once I was certain I’d regained some strength, I drew a fortifying breath and cracked open an eye. A hazy glow drew my gaze to an electric bulb in the rafters. Where the hell was I? I’d seen electric lights before, but only in well-established settlements like Arkendale and Hoover Dam.

  I blinked to clear my vision, and a bare foot came into view. A man’s leg stretched along the concrete floor within arm’s reach, covered in black cotton pants. He sat with his back to the opposite wall, the other knee bent, eyes closed. My heart stuttered.

  Ropes of muscle defined his arms, his pale chest cut with deep indentions of brawn. His torso was hairless, scarless, his skin tight and smooth. Almost too smooth, like polished marble. Too perfect. Hybrid?

  I jerked my attention
to his mouth, to the full lips that neither smiled nor scowled. Was he asleep? Hiding fangs? Waiting for me to wake? None of that made sense. If he was human, he wouldn’t have closed his eyes and let his guard down with a stranger. Maybe he knew who I was? If he was a hybrid, he would’ve fucked me or killed me while I was unconscious.

  Without moving or breathing, I allowed myself another second to absorb the beautiful bone structure of his face and the sweep of black hair across his brow. Strong nose, masculine jaw, not a hint of stubble. He was devastatingly gorgeous.

  An inexplicable desire to see his eyes fluttered in my chest, the feeling both unnerving and strangely exciting.

  Was he the one who shot the dart in my neck?

  Yanking my gaze away, I scanned the room for a weapon and an exit. Four concrete walls, wood rafters embedded in concrete overhead, and two doors made up the confined space. One doorway was doorless, revealing a bathroom just large enough to hold the toilet and place to stand beneath the shower head.

  The other door was a solid steel barrier. No cracks to let light in, no hinges, no locks or knobs.

  No way out. My heart slammed out of control.

  With soundless movements, I sifted a hand through the furs, knowing full well I wouldn’t find anything useful. I’d been stripped of weapons. But other than the dull throb in my thigh, I didn’t sense any new injuries.

  I glanced back at the man, and my breath caught.

  Eyes, the color of a lightning storm, glowed with iridescent streaks of silver and ice. They were impossibly clear, faceted like diamonds, and ringed with lethal confidence. My throat went dry.

  As he stared at me, nothing moved. Not his chest to allow respiration. Not his lashes to enable blinking. I might’ve thought he was dead, except his crystal gaze was very much alive. It invaded my skin and fucked with my breathing. No, it didn’t just invade. It attacked. In that deadlock of eye contact, I questioned my fate, my purpose, and everything I thought I knew about myself and the world.

  I was captivated, offended by my own stupefaction, and terrified down to my basest instincts. I simply lay there, irrationally paralyzed as he consumed me with a single look. This man, a stranger, might’ve been an enemy, if he was even a man at all. Yet my instinct to kill wasn’t triggered.

  At gut level, I knew he wasn’t a hybrid. But he wasn’t human either.

  “Show me your teeth.” Sweat broke out on my forehead.

  He studied me with those monochromatic eyes that were neither white nor gray. When he finally blinked, they flickered through every shade of electricity. “Show me yours.”

  The guttural resonance of his voice pulsed through me, an endless echo that compelled my lips to pull back from my straight human teeth. Hybrids couldn’t retract their fangs, so now that he knew I was human, what would he do about it?

  He inclined his head, not a hint of surprise in his ethereal expression. He looked at me as if he didn’t just know who I was but knew my very soul and intended to shred it on a level I didn’t even know existed.

  “Your turn.” I lifted on an elbow.

  The twitch at the corner of his mouth twisted and taunted before stretching into a smile that separated with intimidation. A smile that revealed bright white teeth and the irrefutable twin points of elongated canines.

  My pulse detonated as I shoved off the furs and leapt into a crouch, balancing my weight on my uninjured leg. Surrounded by concrete walls without a weapon, I had no way of defending myself, no way to escape.

  Was he the captor or a captive like me? Did it matter at this point? He has fangs!

  With my fingers curled in the bedding beneath my feet, I braced for a fight to the death.

  He rubbed a palm along the thigh of his outstretched leg, his other arm draped over his bent knee. I should’ve expected his control. He hadn’t bitten me while I slept, hadn’t shown any interest in closing the distance between us.

  “What are you?” My back bumped the wall as I poised on the balls of my feet.

  “I’m the same as you.”

  He wasn’t human, not with those freaky translucent eyes and the all-knowing way he watched me.

  “We’re not—”

  “We’re both fighters.” His gaze traveled over the band of suede across my breasts, down my bare arms, and lingered on the chewed-up hole in my leggings.

  I didn’t have to look to know the leather strip I’d tied around my wound had been replaced with a dry cotton bandage. Who had tended my injury? Him? Someone else?

  “We both bleed.” He drummed his fingers on his leg. “We both dream and fear and fuck.”

  Heat tinged my cheeks. “Are you a hybrid?”

  “Are your fathers hybrids?”

  If he knew who I was, he’d know my fathers had fangs. But they were human, immune to the infection because they’d consumed my mother’s blood.

  I squinted at him. “Are you human?”

  He made a sudden jerking motion that sent me lunging toward the door. I slammed my shoulder against the steel and swept my hands along the edge where a handle should’ve been.

  “We can’t get out.” Sitting in the same place, he licked a fang and huffed a laugh. “Do you always spook so easily around humans?”

  “You’re not human.” I pressed my back against the door. “Who brought me in here?”

  “How red is the hair on your cunt?” He flashed a razored grin. “As red as your face?”

  The fire in my cheeks spread to my neck. “Who drugged me?”

  He shrugged and rested his head against the wall with a sparkle of amusement in his eyes.

  “Are we in the basement of the mansion?” I glanced at the rafters. “Who lives here? What do they want?”

  “I have questions, too, but while I watched you sleep, I seem to have forgotten all train of thought but one.” His gaze burned white-hot. “Has the prophesied daughter ever been fucked?”

  I clamped my jaw shut and balled my hands.

  “Yes or no.” He tipped his head. “Has the notorious Dawn of Eve ever been impaled by a cock?”

  My nostrils flared as anger seared through my chest.

  “Oh, now don’t give me that look. The entire world is dying to know the status of your hymen.”

  Who the fuck was this guy? No one would ever say that to me. No one would dare. I’d created the Resistance, rallied thousands of soldiers, took out all the breeding facilities in America, and just decimated the last nest in Canada. Hybrids fought me, but they did so with fear. Because they knew that someday I would win back mankind’s freedom.

  Freedom to come out of hiding. To walk down the street without weapons. To rebuild cities and create music and art and follow dreams. Someday, humans would return to the life our ancestors enjoyed.

  But first, I needed to escape this room.

  “How did you end up in here?” I straightened, arms at my sides and muscles burning to strike.

  “A dart in my neck.”

  I searched his translucent eyes for the truth and felt a gravitational pull to keep looking, an insane urge to fall deeper, to sink further into the brilliant shards of light.

  With great effort, I refocused on his shoulder, breaking the trance. “Were you one of the hybrids that chased me here?”

  Confusion creased his beautiful face. Such a human expression.

  “How long have you been here?” I kept my gaze on his shoulder.

  “A day. Maybe two.”

  Not the answer I expected. I didn’t trust him. “What’s your name?”

  “Salem.”

  I’d never heard of him, not that I’d expected to. “Your full name.”

  He shook his head.

  Why wouldn’t he tell me? Did he not know?

  Surnames were no longer relevant. Since men outnumbered women five to one, most of us had one mother and multiple fathers. So we took our mothers’ first names. Eddie of Shea, Dawn of Eve…

  “Salem of…?” I raised a brow.

  Refusal twisted his li
ps into a smirk, the fucker.

  “Were you born with fangs?” I kept my voice steady, despite the uneasiness tingling my skin. “Or were you bitten?”

  “Born this way, sweetheart.” His gaze made a leisurely descent to my mouth, and his fangs indented his lower lip. “If you come closer, I’ll let you touch them.”

  No fucking way. I furrowed my brow. If he entered the world with those teeth, then his mother had been bitten while pregnant. The venom would’ve altered his mind while he was in utero, and he would’ve been born a hybrid, mindless in hunger. By puberty, he would’ve become a raping, killing man-eater on a mission to wipe out humanity.

  Yet he hadn’t made a single attempt to spread my legs and chew on an artery. What the fuck was he?

  Provoking a creature I shared a cage with wasn’t the smartest strategy, but I needed answers. “Are you defective?”

  “Are you? You’re supposed to be mankind’s savior. Yet here you are, trapped with a man who can snuff out your existence in the span of a heartbeat.”

  If that was a threat, why hadn’t he already killed me? I didn’t believe a word he said, but if he’d truly been born with fangs, I could deduce his age and possibly his bloodline.

  Twenty-two years ago, an airborne virus mutated the human race. The aphids were the first wave.

  If he’d been alive when the virus first hit, he wouldn’t be alive now. No one under the age of twenty survived, and every woman mutated into a nymph. Except my mother. Through some genetic anomaly, she evolved into something unexplainable and unique—a human ladybird, the aphid’s predator, the Mother of the Living. Most referred to her as a goddess.

  Two years after the apocalypse, she’d cured every living woman. When she became pregnant with me, she obliterated the aphids. That might’ve given mankind a fighting chance to repopulate, except the Drone had already created a new species. The spiders were the second wave.

  Women didn’t start giving birth in the new world until nineteen years ago. Very few gave birth to human children. The hybrids were the third wave.

  Like those I rescued from the breeding facilities, every woman over the age of twenty-two had been cured and therefore, carried my mother’s healing blood. But their offspring did not. Human women were captured by hybrids and used to breed more hybrids. For nineteen brutal years, hybrids dominated the planet.