I set the arrow aside and rubbed a hand over my face. Jesse was in pain, and all I’d offered him was a clinical glance and a harsh grip on his neck while I ripped out the metal shaft.
Of the four of us, Evie had always been the softer one. Without her mitigation, we tended to deal with our problems shoving and growling like a pack of wolves. Any gentleness that remained in us was reserved for Dawn.
If Evie were here, she would’ve molded her body around Jesse, kissed his lips, and told him she loved him.
I only did those things when I was hard and hungry. With my fangs in his neck.
Maybe he needed a hug? I opened my arms and tried to stifle my grin.
“Fuck off, Doc.” His annoyance sharpened his glare. “Just stop the bleeding. I’ve got shit to do.”
Roark sat beside him, blood dripping from multiple bite marks, his face a grimace of pain. “Dawn, do your da a favor and grab the whiskey in the galley.”
She jumped up from her squat beside Darwin, determination shining in her golden-green eyes. Evie’s eyes.
I grasped her tiny wrist, stopping her retreat. “His drink can wait. Put your hand here.” Guiding her fingers over the hole in Jesse’s chest, I pressed firmly. “Can you hold it?”
“Of course, I can.” Her jaw set, and she stared up at me with the gaze of an old soul, but her youth was unmistakable in her musical voice, the dusting of freckles on her nose, and the way her free hand twirled the coppery lock of her hair.
At the age of six, she’d seen more blood and death than I had as a thirty-year-old doctor before the plague. But she was fearless, ambitious, and stubborn. Just like her mother. Her gentle laugh, enthusiasm in learning, the confident way she carried herself, so many things about her reminded me of Evie. The similarities anchored me. She was like an extension of Evie’s soul, and I needed that connection.
I moved to the mess that was Jesse’s leg and carefully picked out the artillery shell fragments from his skin and muscle. “How many spiders this time?”
Our luxury four-bedroom yacht resided on Lake Mead, a speedboat’s ride along the Colorado River to the dam. We moved out of the dam two months after Evie’s death, fixed up the largest boat on the one-hundred-mile lake, and made it our home. We’d sunk all other watercraft and prevented trespassers from breaching the towering jagged bluffs surrounding our waters.
When we needed reinforcements, our men at the dam came within seconds of our blaring siren. And vice versa, like this morning.
I lifted Dawn’s hand from Jesse’s chest. The bleeding had stopped, the hole sealing with new skin.
“Several hundred spiders.” Jesse laced his fingers through Dawn’s on his chest. “They broke through the dam’s barricades again.”
Which explained the multitude of wounds and bite marks.
Dawn’s eyes widened. “Is Eddie okay?”
Roark unraveled her fingers from her hair, her tiny hand disappearing in his grip as he guided her onto his lap. “Eddie’s fine, lass.”
While I worked in the lab at the dam every day, she spent those hours with Eddie, the oldest of Shea’s three children. Shea provided them with a strict curriculum. Jesse and Roark taught them weaponry. But in the evenings, Dawn learned hand-to-hand combat under my tutelage.
I pried the last of the shrapnel from Jesse’s leg and sat back on my heels. “Fatalities?”
“We lost eight men and three women.” Jesse rose stiffly and gestured toward Dawn. “Let’s go clean you up.”
As I watched them retreat, hand in hand, through the kitchen and down the hall, I agonized over his words.
Eleven people was a huge hit. Seventy-five men and women resided at the dam. Only a handful had volunteered to receive the vaccine I’d spent the past six years developing. The serum worked the same way my bite did, but without the intimacy of orgasm. It prevented the infection of the spider programming and could easily be reproduced and distributed across the continents. But like the spider’s bite, the side-effect was infertility.
The nymphs were cured, and the aphids had been exterminated. Worldwide, there hadn’t been a reported sighting of either in years. But every day, spider babies were delivered into the world, growing fangs within hours after birth and biting their parents. The vicious infection was overrunning the planet with mindless, vampiric creatures, outnumbering us three to one. Their numbers were growing. Those who still had freewill were desperate to keep it. The horror stories I’d heard about mothers performing abortions on themselves kept me awake most nights.
But I couldn’t disperse a vaccine that would create an infertile species. Not after Evie gave her life for the future of humanity.
Roark hadn’t moved, his green eyes roaming my face. “Den’ give up, Doc.” He shifted, kneeling before me, gripped the back of my neck, and brought his forehead to mine. “Den’ give up on us. Jesse and I…we’re right here.”