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A few feet away, Shea’s posture mirrored mine, her hand over her nose, her tall frame bracketed by Paul and Eddie. In the front of the lobby, the boards that had covered the doors lay broken and splintered on the carpet. The aphids had been in a hellfire hurry to barge in. Only to blow up?

“Wha’ are ye thinking, love?” Roark scanned the carnage, his shoulder brushing against mine as he sheathed his sword at his hip.

“We’ve seen aphids explode numerous times, right? But only when my blood enters their systems. Obviously, that’s not what happened here.”

Jesse stood beside Roark, arms crossed with his fist pressed against his mouth, lost in thought.

Then his eyes sliced toward me. “I know you felt them arrive.”

Um, yeah, he was buried eight-inches inside me at the time. He’d probably felt them, too.

He studied my face with that calculating gaze of his. “What were you thinking about right before you felt them die?”

I raised my eyebrows and lowered my voice. “Coming on your cock?”

Roark made an amused noise in his throat.

Jesse rubbed his knuckles over his jaw, his expression marked with discomfort. Or grouchiness. Probably both. “What else?”

“I was just as irritated as you were, Jesse. I wanted the fuckers to die so we could…fin…ish…”

It wasn’t possible, was it? I’d never been able to kill them with my mind. The notion was crazy.

Tell that to my accelerating pulse.

Jesse and Roark looked around the room, their eyes sharpening, no doubt following my train of thought. Roark’s lips parted, and Jesse stood taller, his arms dropping to his sides, fingers twitching.

I gestured at the slaughter. “I just mentally wished this into existence?”

Jesse arched a brown brow. “Didn’t you?”

I didn’t know, but later that night, I had the opportunity to find out.

Squatting outside the front of the hotel, I dipped Darwin’s paws in a bucket of water and washed off the bug guts while Jesse and Roark helped Link and few other guys re-barricade the front doors.

My head snapped up at the sudden encroachment of aphid transmissions. Four pulsing threads wove through my insides, drawing invisible lines down the road.

“Hey, guys.” I rose, my attention on the dark stretch of asphalt. “Four inbound aphids.” I grabbed Darwin’s collar and hurriedly ushered him behind the boarded door and safely inside. “Before you kill them, I want to try something.”

Link scratched his bald head, passed me a look that said You’re a freak, then glanced at his men, giving them a single nod.

Jesse moved to my side and anchored an arrow, training it at the road. Roark shifted behind me, his arms sliding beneath my shirt, ready to support me.

But I didn’t just want to try the new command. I wanted to try it without help. If there had been some kind of genetic restructuring of my abilities, I needed to retest my limits.

Stepping out of Roark’s embrace, I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I’m going to attempt this without your energy. There’s only four aphids, so if I pass out—”

His eyes narrowed into emerald slashes.

“—catch me?” I grinned, met the same unhappy glare from Jesse, and turned toward the street.

The sound of Roark’s sword unsheathing echoed across the parking lot. Boots scuffed around me, and my hair lifted around my face in the chilly breeze.

Stretching east and west, the jagged tops of crumbling buildings rimmed the moonlit skyline, and there, between the rubble of foundations, emerged four glowing outlines.

Their bulbous bodies skittered toward us on soundless feet, blurring through the shadows as if trying to remain out of sight.

The guys wouldn’t be able to see them, not the way I could with my evolved night vision. Their neon forms filed into the street, their pupil-less eyes locking on our group with the barren parking lot stretched out between us.

Pulling in a sturdy breath, I concentrated my mind on one simple thought. I willed them dead.

The wet sound of bursting flesh splattered the silence, their innards spraying the pavement like glow-in-the-dark paint balls. The vibrations inside me evaporated, and in their place rose an invigorating energy, like a full-body shot of oxygen and caffeine, hopping beneath the surface of my skin and fortifying my muscles. I gasped, as if I’d just awoken from a deep sleep, and all the toxins in my body had washed away, my tissues repaired and renewed.

Jesse’s bow lowered, and Link let out a loud bray of laughter.

My heart thudded in my chest, my head swimming through the implications. I did that without skin-on-skin contact. Without blacking out or shivering with loss of energy.

I swiped at my nose and glanced at my hand. No blood.

How was this possible? I just killed aphids with the will of my mind and felt fucking amazing.

Jesse’s concerned expression filled my view, his hand resting on my cheek. “Your eyes are black. No whites at all.”