Brisk reached over and gently rubbed Ronnie’s back, which I was amazed she allowed. “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t haveknown.”
She nodded. “After a few minutes, there were a lot of noises far off, explosions and stuff, so Jeremy started getting nervous. I thought it would be a good idea to check out the building, see if we could hide out inthere.”
Maxine was holding Damien’s little scanner device. “I scanned the building and it didn’t detect any overly warm temps, so we wentin.”
I was rocking back and forth. Between the tense story and the stims, I could’ve run a marathon rightthen.
“What was in there?” Damien asked. I’d forgotten he was next tome.
“Hatchlings,” Nox answered. “Hundreds of freaking hatchlings, and theirmother.”
My hand went to my mouth. “Oh shit.” The evil spawn of the ghouls were a cool ninety-two degrees. Their mother, while tending to her eggs, was a bit higher at ninety-four degrees. Neither would show on Damien’s heat radar. They ran even cooler thanhumans.
Damien cursed. “I’ll make a modification to the device. Have it show any temps above ninety. I’m sorry. I was trying to filter out the humansignatures.”
Maxine waved her hand. “It’s not your fault. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but they were hatching and hungry as hell. The bitch had brought in a dozen dead bodies to feed them as they hatched, and we got stuck in the middle of itall.”
I shivered. Female ghouls were rare, and their one purpose was to just lay eggs all day long, spawning soldiers like queen bees. Some were grunts, like worker bees, and some were sentries, like drones. The hatchlings came out nearly fully grown, the females fed them their first kill, and then they were walking, talking, and communicating. It’s like they were born teenagers. The only good thing was their egg-to-hatch life cycle took a full twelve months; otherwise, we wouldn’t have been able to curb their growth. One female could lay a hundred eggs every three months, but those eggs took a year tohatch.
“Please tell me you killed her.” Killing the egg layers was a top priority. The government had entire special ops teams dedicated to taking those bitchesout.
Maxine grinned, nodding. “Nox helped me barbequeher.”
Nox glared at Maxine. “Stop smiling, you almost got killed!” hesnapped.
Maxine’s face fell. “I got her, didn’tI?”
Nox just shook his head. “Barely.” Then he got up and blasted past me, leaving theroom.
Whoa.
Maxine was frowning, her big bottom lip stuck out in a pout. “What’s his deallately?”
Ronnie looked at me, I looked at Brisk, and the Marine looked at the floor.Should we state theobvious?
“He’s got the hots for you, obviously,” Damien said from over myshoulder.
Okay, well if he said it, then it was all right. It just couldn’t be anyone in our inner circle. I would never betray Nox’s trust like that, but itwassuperobvious.
Maxine’s lips formed an O, but she didn’t sayanything.
“Thanks for waking us up,” Ronnie said, crawling out of bed. “Maxine, you’re like a cat with unlimitedlives.”
“You feel okay?” I asked Ronnie. She didn’t look good, pale with puffyeyes.
She shook her head. “I’d rather no sleep than do half an hour. That’s justtorture.”
I nodded. It was true. Give me four hours or nothing atall.
Brisk rolled out of bed next and called out to Ronnie. “You gonna walk away or stitch up my eye? Damn, woman! Leave me bleeding backhere.”
Ronnie stopped and pivoted, turning to face him and give him a death glare. “Unless you want me to stich your mouth shut, you’ll wait until I’ve had mycoffee.”
She spun and left theroom.
This was what happened when you had a house full of people with no sleep for three days. It would only getworse.
Brisk sighed, watching her leave. “I’m gonna marry thatgirl.”
