Shea pulled in a sharp breath. Her body swayed, as if the wind was rocking her, but there was no disturbance in the air, nothing blowing the hair from my face.
Would she pass out? Elaine’s first encounter resulted in a convulsion of spasms, eyes rolling back in her head, and a dramatic collapse on the ground.
I held the aphid immobile, thoroughly pissing it off, given the hissing snarls and clawing buzz in my stomach. Shea watched it, locked in a stunned, unblinking stance, the carbine forgotten in her grip as the barrel dipped toward the ground.
Her gaze shifted toward mine, and her eyes bugged out. “Your…your…”
“Black eyes?” I gave her a small smile. “My pupils dilate when I’m controlling them. It’s normal.”
“That can’t be your pupils.” Her chest heaved. “There’s no whites in your eyes. That’s…that’s not normal, girl.”
I had to give her credit. She didn’t put a bullet in my head and run away. Instead, she lifted the carbine and retrained it on the aphid.
Something tickled my arm and the back of my leg. Fucking flies. I slapped at them, too slow to squash them.
“Jesus, you described what they looked like.” Her voice lowered to a whisper, rattled and reedy. “But nothing could’ve prepared me for this, you know?” Her finger trembled on the trigger. “And what in the name of God is that smell?”
“Some bang of odour off the buggie.” Roark grinned, but the vigilant way he watched the aphid over her shoulder was anything but amused. “The smelly cunt doesn’t shower. It feasts on blood and death. And I bet the dirty growler between her legs is leaking some rotten fanny farts.”
“Roark.” I gave him a disgusted glare.
“That thing is female?” Shea’s chocolate complexion took on a grayish hue. “How can you tell?”
Good question. Not a scrap of clothes on the aphid’s dome-shaped body. No distinguishing characteristics either, like remnants of hair, tattoos, or ear piercings. Genitalia were among the first things to recede in mutation, followed by lips and fingers. But there was a small trace of her human life.
I pointed to the bulging chest. “See the two hanging lumps of flesh?”
Shea cocked her head and wrinkled her nose. “Tits?”
I shrugged. “Silicone implants.”
“An insect with a boob job.” She let out a strained laugh. “Now I’ve seen it all.” Her teeth sank into her bottom lip. “Can they reproduce?”
“No.” Jesse shifted behind me, his fingers tightening beneath my breast. “Dr. Nealy studied their physiology. They don’t have working reproductive organs.”
In two years, I’d never seen aphids mating. Never encountered a baby bug. They were driven to do one thing: Feed. And if they devoured every mammal on the planet, what then? If their adaptable bodies couldn’t starve, would they just wander the earth in an eternal stupor, unable to feed, unable to die?
The aphid pulled on our connection, testing its strength. As long as Jesse stayed put, I had an inexhaustible energy supply to hold it.
I turned my chin toward Jesse. “Do you feel an energy drain?”
“No, darlin’. I feel you. Like a subtle vibration beneath my hands, but nothing threatening.”
Roark and Michio had said similar things before. Evidently, they didn’t run out of power the way I did.
The bug seemed to realize my control over it was endless, throwing back its head and releasing a thunderous buzz that resonated through the clearing like a million wasp wings. Tubular parts writhed in its throat, flinging strings of black snot as its hooked hands clawed at the ground.
Shea watched in open-mouthed horror. “Do they feed on each other?”
Oh, how I wished they did. “Mutated blood is poisonous to aphids and nymphs. It kills them, and I guess they instinctively know this, because I’ve never seen them turn on each other.”
“But if I had bitten a human, I would’ve turned into that,” she mumbled to herself.
If she’d turned into that, she would’ve been beyond saving. Nymphs could only bite once, the bite instantly turning them into aphids.
I sent a silent thanks to her dead husband for keeping her locked up for two years. We needed her. Mankind needed her.
She confronted this creature remarkably well and would make a hell of a fighter. Shoulders now squared, chin up, she planted her sneakers stubbornly in the dirt. It was hard to believe only a week ago her body had undergone a drastic transformation, reforming bones into human ribs and dissolving tubular mouthparts designed for piercing and sucking blood.
The ashen tint of her brown skin and the bags under her eyes were the only hints that she wasn’t at full health.
I nodded to Roark. “It’s time.”
Shea glanced between me and the agitated aphid and tucked the butt of the carbine tight against her shoulder. “I want to kill it.”
Roark moved to her side, scrutinizing the way she held the gun, the pull of his brows drawing worried lines around his eyes. I knew his concern. The boom of the carbine could draw attention, and he could kill the bug quietly.