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Then I felt it. A keener pitch amid the vibrations. A twinge beyond the basic hunger. A spark of something...more. “Wait. I think…” The magnetic current didn’t feel like communication. Not like the aphids. The electricity knitting into and through me was neither attraction nor repulsion. It was simply a shared sense of each other. “She’s here. I can feel her.”

Jesse twisted to look at me, the skin around his copper eyes tight with impatience. “I thought you couldn’t communicate with them?”

“The nymphs on Malta...their pain leaked to me. And Elaine, I called her out of that cabin.” I rubbed my chest. “No wait, that’s not right. I shared her sadness and somehow controlled her with warm feelings.”

Jesus, that even sounded crazy to my own ears.

Jesse spoke through clenched teeth. “And now?”

“Same, I think.”

The truck stopped, and Jesse gripped the back of my neck, his glare hard and pressing against me. “Be sure, Evie.”

The tiny spasm in my chest pulsed amid the frenzy of vibrations. Then it faded.

I jerked out of his grip. “Fuck if I know. I’m still trying to get a grip on this—” I waved a hand over my gut. ”Whatever this is.”

Heavy breaths in the close quarters marked the passing seconds. Metal gear and weapons clinked, and clothing rustled. The prickling feeling in my core spread to my limbs and seemed to intensify the anxiety bouncing between the six of us.

“Okay.” Jesse glanced at the buildings, his gaze darting over the sparsely-treed landscape and the woods beyond. “Tallis, Georges to the tree line. Your gunfire will draw the bugs away from Evie. The priest’s sword and my bow will cover the truck.” He looked at Michio. “Doc?”

Michio’s head dipped. “I’ll stay with her.”

I was the best aim in the group. And my weird genetics gave me a predator’s speed and reflexes. The genetics of the aphid’s natural predator. But my guardians wouldn’t risk it, not in situations like this when they didn’t have a perimeter in place or a full handle on what we were facing.

The truck’s metal walls screeched. The sound of talons scratched the rear door, and the vibrations inside me went ballistic.

My throat closed, and my finger jumped to the trigger on the carbine. The field of grass lay motionless around us. They’d sneaked up from behind.

A skitter scraped across the roof.

My pulse spiked, and Tallis’ whisper crept through the tension. “Oh fuck.”

A hard-shelled body dropped on the hood, its limbs folding into an aggressive crouch. Double-jointed legs propelled it to the windshield, and claws hammered the glass, cracking spider webs across the center. My muscles locked up as two more climbed onto the hood, the metal groaning beneath the weight.

Their eyes bulged like eggs, searching for a way in. I traced the psychic links, tapping into each jumbled brain. Their thoughts were uniform, simple. Catch. Feed.

The rear door rattled open, and sunlight rushed in behind me. The aphids on the hood cocked their heads and scrambled off, toward the noise. Shuffling boots signaled Roark’s, Tallis’, and Georges’ exit from the delivery truck. I tried to swallow down my fear for them, but it shook through my body with an almighty chill.

When the metal door slammed shut and a dark quiet settled over my back, the hairs on my nape stood on end. That unnerving feeling magnified as I watched Roark in the side mirror, his powerful frame sprinting around the truck and slicing his way through a throng of aphids.

Jesse clasped the door handle. “Evie?”

I nodded, my gaze glued to Roark, as I hissed through my teeth, “Stay behind like a good girl.”

Jesse jumped out, arrow nocked at his cheek. A scaly arm swiped from behind him. He spun. The arrow flew, and the door shut on a shriek. In a blur of muscle and flinging arrows, Jesse ran into the fray.

My guardians were so different from one another, but they shared a common skill in crude weaponry. Roark wielded a sword like Viking King. Jesse not only crafted arrows but flung them with mind-boggling accuracy. And while Michio’s agile body was his deadliest weapon, he carried a shinobi-zue. It was… well, I wasn’t exactly sure, but it looked like a thin, harmless wooden tube. Hidden inside, however, were retractable blades, chains, and deadly hooks. It was elusive, unpredictable, and he swung it with supernatural force.

Michio’s hand covered my white knuckles. “Still feel the nymph?”

The vibrations in my chest made my heart pound for two reasons. The aphids’ hunger was multiplying, and the nymph’s spark was gone.

I shook my head, focused on Roark’s cassock billowing around him. The sword’s pommel arced up in his two-handed grasp. Steel streaked, and death fell in its wake. He dodged a speared mouth, tackled the back of another.

I couldn’t stop shaking. If he made one misplaced step… “I need to get out there and help them.”