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This? What the hell was this?

My eyes snapped open, and my senses powered up as I peered into the darkness of the room. But my internal sensor was quiet, and deafening silence rang in my ears.

The hairs on my arms stood on end as I waited, muscles locked, everything narrowing to the sound of…nothing.

There were three bedrooms upstairs, but after we’d nailed pieces of furniture to the ground floor entry points, we opted to sleep in the living room near the front door. I lay half-on, half-off Roark’s chest on a musty couch. Jesse and Darwin shared the rug on the floor. Shea took the recliner.

I couldn’t make out their forms in the dark, but the steady pacing of their breaths told me they hadn’t woken. Even Darwin was snoring lightly.

Weird. Maybe the scratching was all in my head? I focused inwardly, searching for the magnetic charge I felt moments ago.

A ruthless quake shivered through me, cutting off my air, accompanied by the faint sound of clawing against the rear of the house. The front window rattled. The wind? The house settling? Or was there more than one thing out there?

What kind of thing? I couldn’t trace any links to aphids. Couldn’t hear their distant growls. If it were the Drone, wouldn’t I have felt a deathly sort of warning? Could it be Michio?

Maybe Michio, but my recognition of his presence would’ve been automatic, right? Unless he'd changed even more than he had when he left?

Something sharp rubbed along the outside walls and scraped over a window in the rear. It circled both sides of the house, everywhere all at once, patient and deliberate, as if searching for a way in.

I listened hard to identify the timing and placement of the scratches. Whatever was out there was either circling with inhuman speed or there was more than one of them. I swallowed around my hammering pulse, my stomach twisting in on itself.

The scratching ceased and took my breath with it.

Abrupt silence was the worst. It was worse than the reverberations of hungry snarls chasing me in the woods. Worse than the gurgling screams of humans amid mutation. Worse than the rip of clothing and the creak of rope when men took my body without permission.

It was silence. Which could be nothing. Or something. A trap. A deceptive relief.

I breathed quietly, my muscles stiff against Roark’s. Then I felt it. The soundless echo of pain, creeping over me like a frigid whisper. A summons without words. A conjuring.

My bones turned to ice, and my nails dug into my palms. Could it—they—break in?

A voice in my head said, Let them.

My voice. Against all logic, the compulsion to open the front door sent me scrambling to my knees. One hand landed on the back of a couch, the other on the warm skin of Roark’s chest, grounding me. But my attention locked on the vicinity of the door, its location blackened by shadows.

The cushions bounced under my legs. Roark sat up, and his arms encircled my hips, every muscle in his body taut and alert beneath me. “Wha’ is it?”

My fingers found his mouth in the dark and covered his parted lips. I concentrated on the energy circulating through my insides, trying to make sense of the chaotic sparks. Each stinging transmission felt like liquid ice piercing my veins, spreading to my limbs and producing a cold ache in my joints.

Whatever this was wasn’t aphid. It was too shivery, too pleading, too emotional. It was ice-cold sadness.

My heart skipped. Was it Michio? A nymph? One of the Drone’s tricks?

I released Roark’s mouth and reached for the floor, my fingers finding and gripping a muscled shoulder.

Shaking it harshly, I whispered, “Jesse, wake up.”

In an instant, he stood, flashlight in hand, and aimed a beam of light at the circular tabletop we’d nailed to the front door’s frame. Table legs and cabinet doors barred the windows on either side.

He swung the beam to the recliner, spotlighting Shea’s fuzzy head. She shielded her eyes against the glow and bunched her shoulders up around her ears. Darwin stood beside her, head cocked, his body low to the floor and frozen in readiness. They knew the drill. Don’t make a noise. Wait for orders.

A thump rattled the front door, followed by the sound of a keen edge scoring wood. It dragged over the handle, wobbling it, then continued on, creaking across the wood siding and pausing at the window barred with table legs. My blood ran cold, and a shiver gripped my body.

It stood at the window. Glass, wooden bars, and a handful of nails wouldn’t stop the blast of a shotgun, or a hungry aphid, or a monster with wings. But whatever waited on the other side seemed content with a psychological attack as it tap-tap-tapped on the pane.