For who goes up your winding stair can ne’er come down again.”
Mary Howitt
Snapshots of congealing blood crowded my awareness, holding my body like a limp thing in my bed. The images were so tangible my taste buds were imbued with pennies. The sources of these sensations, the creatures that once made up the men and women of Maltese society, prowled the compound. Their screeches drifted through the walls of my prison, pushing their hunger, making it my own.
A venomous presence pulsed at the heart of the entangled transmissions. It was him, seeking me internally as his human body closed the distance. I probed the connection, learning it, tracing invisible fingers along the thread and reached.
What I found was an icy void, where his soul should’ve been. I recoiled, but the chasm bulged, swallowing my strength and screwing with my breathing. I couldn’t fight the pull to give him anything he wanted.
Holy Mother, that was how he controlled them, and what it felt like when he did. I had to unplug.
I knelt on the bed and put my palms on the wall. I let out one more trembling breath then slammed my forehead into the stone facade. Pain exploded through my face. I fell back and let the throbbing give way to unconsciousness.
When I came to, my senses were my own. Quiet held outside the door. Thank you, skull-crushing wall. I groaned and opened my eyes.
The sun hovered. So did a man-shaped thing called the Drone. His glossy curls curtained my face. He leaned lower and cupped my jaw, his gentle touch at odds with the sinister vibe dripping from him. “My dear Eveline. It is time.”
I couldn’t hide the strain in my face as I recoiled beneath my skin and scanned the room. Where was Dr. Nealy?
The mattress sprang up. He strode to the chamber door. “Wear the
chador.
Come.”
We were leaving the chamber? My heart leapt as I grabbed the robe and slipped it over my chemise. My longing to get down those stairs outweighed my need to empty my bladder and scrub the grit from my teeth. Still, I questioned the wisdom in going anywhere with him. “Where are we going?”
His head dipped, lower, closer, bringing cold lips to my cheekbone, to the corner of my mouth.
My jaw tightened until I thought my teeth would break. Would he violate me while yanking my mind through our connection and stealing my will? If I fought him hand-to-hand, could I neutralize him?
Whiskers pricked my chin. His lips hovered, separated. Where the fuck was the doctor?
The Drone’s right hook cracked my head to the side. I staggered back, bent over and clutched my knees. Big breath. Another. What was that for? I jiggled my jaw and looked up.
His bent position mirrored mine, face constricted and one hand cupping his side. The other popped the lid of a small plastic bottle. White pills tumbled to his tongue and he returned the bottle to a pocket in his cloak.
I punched out my fist. He deflected it with a blur of his own and swept my feet from under me. The crunch with the floor shot pain up my spine.
The kinks gone from his face, he crouched beside me. “Audacity is a plague, Eveline. And your gender is especially susceptible. Your fearlessness in my presence, your attempt to usurp my guards”—a wave of vibration bounced between us—“demonstrate your total disregard for Allah’s punishment. It is time you learn humility. Eyes down.”
I rose and slid one foot out, centering my stance. I wanted to bend back his dick and drive it up his ass. Would the consequences be worth the reward? I lowered my head.
He bound my wrists behind my back. Then, as if he hadn’t just plowed his fist into my face, his arm coiled around mine. “Walk with me.”
Said the madman to the fly. I clenched my muscles to suppress my trembling.
He guided us to the stairs. Splinters of wood scattered the floor, gnawed from the chamber door’s exterior.
Elbow to elbow, we squeezed into the narrow stairway. Two guards trailed our winding descent. My stomach flopped between their thirst leaking at my back and the anticipation of nearing Roark’s cell.
On the final bend, I censored my movements. Loose limbs, steady breathing, and eyes down. Pretend Roark was dead. Pretend to be broken. I forced a pitch of uncertainty in my voice. “Permission to speak?” There, that sounded scared. Maybe I was.
His boots squeaked to a stop, pivoted toward me. His rib cage contracted. Even breaths whispered over my head.
Eyes down, eyes down. Oh, why did I open my mouth?
“Speak.”
Shit. I’d lost my train of thought. When he released me to clutch his side, I went with it. “What are the pills for?”
The atmosphere surged with the animosity radiating off him. His hand curled on his abdomen then slid into his pocket, no doubt caressing the pill bottle. “Kidney.”
Kidney?
Then we were moving again, double speed. The stairs emptied into a small atrium with two doorways. One opened to a corridor. The other had to be Roark’s cell.
He stalled at Roark’s door, fingers playing over my arm. My throat closed, but I didn’t dare look at the barrier separating me from Roark.
When he tugged me toward the corridor, relief warred with the lump in my throat. Swallowing hard, I forced my feet to keep up.
We passed the hall’s double doors. The tower’s anteroom. The quadrangle. More doors. Then another stairwell, which took us below ground.
Mold tinged the damp air. A mist chilled the stairs and bit my bare feet. Kerosene fumed from torches marking each curve.
The last step butted a mahogany door. A flutter invaded my stomach, the Drone’s cue to his guards. Their feet shuffled behind me as they retreated up the stairs.
As the door opened, he a made a rolling sweep of his arm. “My lab.”
Did I expect dripping walls clad with chains and whips, a bedlam of unidentifiable body parts, beakers overflowing with sultry gases, and a skull fringed throne overlooking the savage activities? Yes, I did.
My imagination was amended with fluorescent bulbs swagging from the ceiling, biohazard bins and equipment beeping and blinking on immaculate workbenches.
A microscope slide skidded across the first desk as he passed. “Your survival is…perplexing, yet your blood is ordinary. Now it is time to further our research.”
I kept my head down, pretended disinterest.
“In the name of Allah, behold Sura 2:223. ‘Your women are the bearers of your seed. Thus, you may enjoy this privilege however you like, so long as you maintain righteousness.’“ His tone hardened.
“
Like a field to cultivate, you will harvest children.”
My head shot up. “Oh, and you’ll be the sperm donor? Too bad you can’t get it up.”
He backhanded me. I stumbled, my tied hands hindering my balance. My tongue sloshed in a mouth of blood. I leaned over, let it rope to the concrete. The ache to start swinging was as compulsory as it was pointless.
Dirty fingers invaded my mouth, jamming into the open gash inside my cheek. Fuck, that hurt.
He yanked out his hand, smacked my face. “You’ll remember your place.”
“There’s a hiccup in your plan.” I spat more blood and braced for another punch. “I’m not fertile.”
His fist slid across my jaw. I spun into a desk. Pain shot through my teeth. In the years I spent learning how to throw knives and tactically clear rooms, maybe I should have invested some time on stratagem and diversion. How the fuck would I talk myself out of there?
“Lying to me will not help your petition. Dr. Nealy confirmed your ovulation and fertility from your vaginal exam.”
My whole body tensed. The doctor could’ve examined me any number of times he sedated me. And he would’ve discovered my IUD. I knew he hadn’t removed it. The string that extended from my cervix was still there. I checked for it regularly to make sure the thing hadn’t moved. Either the Drone was lying to me or the doctor was lying to the Drone.
The muffled squall of a baby diffused the room. I turned toward the maw looming at the end of the lab. Another winding stairway. Another basement. Whimpers crept from within.
Sweat formed on my nape. I twisted my hands in the binds at my back.
He gathered his long ringlets of hair into a surgeon cap and slipped on latex gloves, both at odds with the sable cape draping his shoulders. Then he clutched my bicep and hauled me into the black hole. His accent rolled in the dark. “It is time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: FEAR WHAT IS NOT UNDERSTOOD
I thought I understood fear.
I thought I understood fear when my hands were bound in my father’s basement. When my legs were forced open by the man I considered a father.
I thought I understood fear when my dagger tore through my chest. When my breast flopped away from my muscle.
I thought I understood fear when my protector, my lover was chained to a wall and fed to an army of aphids. When only a foot separated us and there wasn’t a goddamn thing I could do about it.
But I never had to wait for fear. It always sneaked up and took me by surprise.
It wasn’t until the Drone pushed me through the door at the bottom of those stairs that I truly understood. This time, I would see it coming. I would have time to think about it, to dread it. This time, fear was waiting.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
Dante Alighieri
A cloud of rot chased me back. I stumbled, falling against the Drone’s chest. Shock stole my breath and cremated my ability to process the swaying body, metal mask, dog crate, and spanking bench.
The shove at my back sent me hurtling. My toe caught. Graveled dirt smashed into my knees then my chin without my hands to stop the forward motion.
Two iron hooks hung from the ceiling, suspending a girl with all-white eyes. I would’ve gauged her youth as prepubescent if it weren’t for the full-term bulge of her belly. Tiny hands curled around the prongs, which pierced through her palms and held her weight.
Blood stained the butterfly embroidery on her tattered skirt. A molded restraint mask with a barred mouth hole concealed her face but not the terror in her glassy eyes. Green-gray toes stretched toward the ground, toward the reprieve she wouldn’t reach.
Bile spurted from my mouth and seeped into the earth. “Free the nymph. What’s the point in hanging her like that?”
A boot heel dug into my hair, pinning my cheek to the dirt floor. “To break her.”
Cane cuts on her undeveloped breasts expanded with her inhales. Her eyes fluttered closed. Silent. Broken.
Sconces blackened the sweating walls with smoke and cast dim light on the padded sawhorse and the naked body strapped to it. Tawny skin, ass pointing in the air, scar zigzagging his brow, depravity in his eyes. Why was the Imago restrained?
Latex fingers pinched my arm then I was flying toward the dog crate. The steel-toed punch in my back propelled me across the threshold. I curled at the rear of the cage to avoid the next kick. The gate shut and the padlock snicked, giving me a moment’s freedom from his jumpy boots.
“What do you want?”
The Drone poked a stray curl into his cap. “Allah’s chosen.”
“What does that mean?” But I already knew.
“A master race. Human adherents of Islam.” His eyes sparkled with delusional dreams.
I fought the scream out of my voice. “When you created the virus to wipe out the heretics
”—
starting with American women—“were nymphs part of that design?” I couldn’t bring myself to look at the horror hanging from the ceiling.
He circled the spanking bench and rested a gloved palm in the spread of his brother’s butt cheeks. “Yes. I chose the aphid genome for its adaptive reproductive abilities.” He fingered the trembling cleft. “Did you know an aphid can create eggs or live nymphs depending on its environment?”
I lifted a stiff shoulder as his probing finger pulled a gurgled choke from the Imago.
Homosexuality didn’t faze me, but incest and rape? The tongueless protest wrung my stomach and roused a memory from the hall. Roark’s abused nipples. The Drone’s lingering touches. What if the doctor lied about no visitors in his cell? Bile resurfaced. I would do more than slice out his tongue.
A middle finger crammed past the ring of muscle that protected the Imago’s bowels. “I created an evolutionary breed of female hosts. Seeding them with my family blood will ensure a pristine race.”
The whacko had exterminated the human species to repopulate it himself. Yet, he rutted on men. And given the bruising around the Imago’s rectum, he rutted often. Boy, was that a kink in his plan.
The nymph’s moan saturated the room. Movement bubbled her bloated belly, a gruesome reminder that his plan was already in place.
Seeding them with my family blood.
The Imago didn’t share his brother’s sexual preference. I’d bet my carbine that nymph impregnation was in his job description. “How does one man repopulate the world?”
His mouth parted as he pumped his finger. Butt muscles quivered in the Imago’s effort to press them together.
He withdrew his hand. “I isolated specific aphid species. Those that have telescoping generations.” He stripped the gloves, donned a new pair and caught the blank look on my face. “It is the ability to carry a daughter within the womb, one who is also pregnant with a daughter. Additionally, the humanoid nymph has a four week gestation and swift healing. Now you see how I can manufacture Allah’s chosen race.”
The turbulence in my gut was merciless. “Sounds like a race of inbred retards rife with genetic disorders.”
A charged current arced between us. “Weak recessive traits will be weeded out.”
“Take out the weak and there’ll be nothing left.”
His boot crashed into the cage, denting the bars. “You will not disrespect my family.”
“I’ll make sure all future disrespect is for you alone.” I was begging him to unleash. Brimming with my own need to lose it, I wanted those soulless eyes within clawing distance.
He grabbed the padlock and fumbled with the dial.
“What happens when all the mammals on this planet have been consumed and the blood runs out? What will your divine race sink its teeth into then?”