“Let’s get her healthy first.” Roark shifted his gaze from Michio to the still nymph-like, unconscious woman. “Then we’ll worry about traveling.”
Jesse strode toward the door and scanned the hillside. Beyond his broad frame, the horizon swallowed the final haze of daylight.
Despite the gun shots, Georges and Tallis would’ve known not to give up their positions on guard to come investigate.
Jesse hadn't said a word about the situation. Was he plotting Michio’s death? Or thinking about ways to use the doctor’s abilities as a weapon? I wished I could read his locked-down mind.
When he looked back at me, I tried to decipher his eyes. Coppery, paradoxical, and contemplative, sometimes they gave a glimpse into his stormy emotions. But not now. They were as guarded and secretive as his thoughts.
Back on my feet, I holstered my sidearm on my thigh and adjusted the carbine’s sling on my shoulder. The mark on Michio’s chest had vanished, along with the fangs. How had I not noticed his teeth before? Could he retract them at will?
I opened my mouth to ask but caught myself. His eyes were closed, and I had more important questions bucking inside my skull. Like would he continue to evolve? Would he turn into the monster the Drone became? I chewed the inside of my cheek, my fingers restlessly tapping the carbine. No, the Drone had been a monster long before the virus.
Roark stood and pulled my hand from the carbine. Was he trying to separate me from the gun? Worried I’d shoot Michio on principle?
He massaged my fingers, tenderly, lovingly. My nerves were so overloaded I shook against the sensation.
“Why den’ ye go clean up?” He glanced at my tattered jeans and blood-soaked tank top. “I’ll watch over Doc and Shea.”
The nymph-woman breathed in a deep, steady rhythm, but even in sleep her face began to narrow. The sickly hue of her complexion receded, her muscles filling with blood beneath her skin, her cells growing and changing from my blood. And the sounds. Ugh, the sucking sounds of her throat breaking down and reforming saturated the room. Indentations climbed up and down her neck, like fingertips pressing from the inside. I could almost feel her mandible cracking apart, the inhuman pieces disintegrating, the gruesome snap and grind of bones.
As horrific as the transformation was to watch, it was the reason we were here. Despite whatever we now faced with Michio, we’d succeeded in freeing another woman from the creature she had been trapped in.
I flexed my fingers, my steps a little lighter as I joined Jesse at the door. “I need a smoke.”
Maybe I could burn away the rest of the tension with a couple or twenty cancer sticks.
Jesse untied a tiny leather pouch from his belt and passed it over. “There’s a water hole round back. I’ll guard while you bathe.”
He strode out the door, not bothering to wait for me. Damn the confidence in his gait, the imposing bow at his back, and the way his jeans cupped his ass. He could’ve modeled for the Playgirl edition of Outdoor Life magazine. But it was a good distraction as I left the drama behind me, if only for a short while.
The brawn in his shoulders and biceps moved sensually beneath his sun-soaked skin. Messy spikes of hair paired perfectly with the dirty, glistening sweat on his nape and back. Worn denim accentuated his battle-toned thighs. Even the mud-caked boots looked intimidating. He really was a savage. If I pressed my nose to his neck, I’d smell the wildness wafting from his pores.
He made me feel safe, despite the vulnerability wheezing from my lungs.
But his feral appearance wasn’t half as reassuring as the intelligence working behind those fierce eyes. He harbored opinions about Michio, even if his casual indifference said otherwise. I needed to hear his thoughts, wanted him to tell me our team of four still had each other’s backs, that we’d survive this. Together.
Smokes in hand, I followed on his heels with every intention of prying the hulking, reluctant conversation from his clamped lips.
Hues of deep purple streaked the sky, casting an unnerving gloom over the clearing behind the animal clinic. Without a breeze, the stifling air didn’t stir. Neither did the shadows between the skeletal trees that surrounded the field and small pond. The area was eerily still, too quiet, like a fog from the water hole was suffocating the environment.
Except there was no fog.
A few steps ahead, Jesse’s long-legged strides slowed. When I reached his side, he said, “Stay here.”
“Do you feel it, too?”
He squinted at the trees, his eyebrows burrowing together. “What? Are there aphids?”
“No.” I pressed a hand against my stomach, feeling strangely calm yet not calm at all.
His nostrils flared as his attention darted around us, his body posed, as if ready to attack the shadows.