Joel moaned from the other post. My heart pummeled as I knelt before him. His tiny pupils stared at me without seeing. My teeth sawed my lips. My numb fingers wrestled the chains.
His body fell in my lap. Vibrations pounded my chest. I held my hand over the chewed hole in his.
“Trust,” he gurgled.
I shook my head, voice caught. He twisted and bucked in my arms. My stomach did the same.
“Trust mind, body and soul.” His hand slapped my chest as if jerked by a string. A fever of compulsions magnetized me to his fingers.
Your guardians. He said it, but his mouth never moved. His pupils dilated. For a brief moment, he appeared human. Then his hand dropped.
End it. His command drifted through me, rode the wind, brushed through the tree canopy.
Tendons in his neck went taut. Lips pulled away from gums. Porcelain orbs bulged. He dug at the dirt, fingers spread in hardened kinks.
I gripped his jaw and screamed, “Joel.”
His hunger rippled through me. His head flopped around between my hands. Blood and spit flew. I strengthened my hold on his jaw. He told me once that after the mutation, the result wasn’t human, wasn’t the person it was before. Did he still believe that?
“Joel,” I shouted.
White eyes glazed over with single-minded focus. Feed.
The tip of my dagger touched his forehead. My palm cupped the hilt, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. I pushed hard and fast.
I woke, jack-knifing in the bed. A sweet, earthy flavor stroked the air, an ilk of sandalwood. It did little to soothe the splintering pain in my chest as my memories rushed in. I squeezed my fist. The dagger was so heavy when I pulled it from Joel’s skull. I left it there, in my father’s vineyard, where I set the fire. The withered grapevines sparked and popped as the flames engulfed Joel’s body. I had only minutes to retrieve clothes from the house before the blaze devoured it too.
My eyes stung. Warm flesh flexed against my face. Arms wrapped around me.
I blinked heavy lashes, tilting my head up. The shadows didn’t conceal the flawless skin and almond shaped eyes of the man who held me.
Oh, fuck no. I shoved the doctor off me and fell with a thud from the bed.
Back on my feet, I swiped my face. My hand came away wet. My failure glistened on his bare chest.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” I choked, backing away.
He stood with the bed between us, arms relaxed at his side. “I’m your doctor, whether you want that or not.” He pushed his hand through his hair. “I’m doing my best to ensure your physical well-being, but it’s moot if your mental health fails.”
I turned away. My feet moved to the corner, to its numbing depths.
“Your nightmares,” he said, “and weeks without talking or making eye contact. You value a tattered letter more than your music player, yet you cover your ears at night. And your changing physiology…”
I tuned out his diagnosis. He chatted on as if he hadn’t played a part in imprisoning me and filleting my heart.
He was suddenly behind me, his breath brushing my hair. “Come back from this madness.”
I had finally remembered Joel’s death. Faced what I’d done. But it wasn’t enough to mend the hole Roark left behind. Stages of denial, anger and bargaining had come and gone in the prior weeks. Yet, as I spun around, it sure felt like I was back to stage one. “I’ll come back when you bring back Roark.”
Creases appeared in his forehead and his eyes darted through the dark as if searching for a response.
After a roam over the open rafters, his gaze settled on mine. “Then abandon all your senses but the sixth one.”
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph Campbell
“My sixth sense?” I gaped. “Intuition tells me you’re a liar and a murderer.”
A muscle jogged in the doctor’s cheek. “So you say. Yet, you’ve seen me do neither. Can’t say the same for you.”
My thoughts skipped to my first night on Malta. Okay, so I had a lethal knack for throwing scissors. My fists clenched and unclenched at my sides, thrumming for a repeat. “Spoken by the man responsible for billions of murders, for Roark’s murder, that barb has no teeth.”
His hand shot through a column of moonlight and squeezed my throat. “He lives.”
I swallowed around his fist, didn’t pretend to misunderstand who. “I watched him get eaten.”
He stared down at me. “No, you didn’t. You commanded the aphids acoustically. Just like Aiman does.” His hand dropped, head cocked, vertical lines separating his brows. “They responded to you. But the effort made you sick.”
I shook my head and backed up. “They didn’t respond. He was covered—”