Page 24 of Ravenous Prophecy
I rubbed my hands over my hair, scratching the top of my head. “I’m still not over the fact that these things are actually real. I mean, can you believe it? The Hive existing? The implications are?—”
“Incredible,” Bradley breathed, a faint tremble in his voice, his eyes alight with inner fire.
“Actually, I was going to say ‘terrifying.’ The implications are terrifying.” I pursed my lips. “Though I suppose from a purely academic standpoint, this discovery must be gratifying for you.”
“Vindication,” he said. “Or something like it. It’s bittersweet, really. Years of being ridiculed and scoffed at, of being told that my field of study was no more legitimate than Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.”
My hand fell to the back of my head, kneading in a guilty, soothing rhythm against my nape. I was one of those ridiculers. Until the oracles, I was one of those scoffers.
“But it feels wrong to celebrate,” he continued. “The Hive have awakened, and they’ve looked into our world with their many eyes. It’s only a matter of time until they cross over. Until they really come back.”
A horde of ravenous alien insects, come to swarm the planet, to devour everything like locusts. I’d peered over Bradley’s shoulder while he read, caught glimpses of those old illustrations. At the time, I thought it was just fantasy. Fiction.
How could I have known that I was looking at anatomical sketches?
A knock at the door. I jumped, clutching at my heart. A pair of agents peered through the window, smirking. The one that I hadn’t bullied into finding me a first-aid kit spoke up.
“She wants to see you. If you’d please follow me.”
Bradley pushed against his chair, making to stand up. The agent held his hand out.
“Not you. Just this one.”
Just me? I hesitated, considering for a moment the safety of the doors currently separating me from Nicoletta Falcón. But she’d only get angrier the longer we delayed this. I gave Bradley a reassuring nod, unsure which one of us needed it more. Minutes later, I’d been frog-marched straight to her office.
Each time I sat across from her like this, I couldn’t help but wonder what was hiding behind that eyepatch. An empty socket, a glass eye, or, knowing Nicoletta, a magically augmented prosthetic. But she stared me down with enough rage out of a single eye as it was. I fidgeted in my seat, fighting the impulse to take a running start and jump through the nearest window.
“You had one job,” her glare seemed to say. And she was right, too. I was supposed to keep an eye on Bradley, keep him out of trouble while sniffing out information on Williams.
But it had become so much more than that—attraction aside—now that Williams was actively in the picture, now that we had proof the Hive existed. I opened my mouth, summoning up just enough courage to launch into an explanation. Nicoletta held up one hand.
“A fine mess you got yourselves into. Why didn’t you just chuck a pipe bomb into a shopping mall? That would’ve caused me fewer problems.”
“Look, Nicoletta.” I held my hands up in placation. “I can explain.”
“I’d like to see you try. First you squirrel your way into one of Williams’s establishments without even bothering to conceal your identities, and then you miraculously findyourselves in the middle of some dispute between oracles and mercenaries?”
“That wasn’t just some dispute. It was an attack on the oracles. As for the Vault—we knew what we were doing. We needed the manuscript, and things worked out just fine.”
“Just fine?” Nicoletta banged her fist on the table. “It was sloppy. That’s what it was.”
I tried not to argue the point that we technically had a few tools to help us with the job—shadow puppets to obscure the security cameras, a good right hook backed up by enchanted brass knuckles. I knew that Nicoletta wasn’t in the mood.
“The club,” I said. “There was barely any magical activity there. You heard about that? Why would the MEA bother?”
“I have eyes and ears everywhere, Gallows, or have you forgotten? We didn’t come down on you for your shenanigans at the club. It was messy, but you made it out with results. But the oracles? What the hell were you thinking?”
She flung a manila folder onto her desk. One of the photographs slid out. I recognized the runes on the ribcage. Nicoletta opened the folder. I grimaced, a dull ache in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ve seen these before. Put them away.”
“And you’ll see them again, and again, if that’s what it takes to remind you what’s at stake. But you’re mistaken. These are new photos. There have been more killings. Children, Gallows. They’re killing kids.”
She shifted the folder, more and more of the photos spilling out onto her desk, a gallery of violence. All thegore, all those runes, the same pattern. I opened my mouth to answer and found I had nothing to say. A dreadful quiet filled the office, my stomach a twist of cold, jagged knots.
“People are dying. These are human sacrifices. We can only spin this with the mundane media for so long. Find out what Williams is actually up to before he opens a portal to hell in our own backyard. No more of this Hive nonsense.” Nicoletta jabbed a finger at one of the grisliest photographs. “This is real, Gallows. These corpses, these killings? That’s what we’re dealing with right now.”
“But the Hive are real, too. It’s all connected. I was there, and I saw it happen. The oracles—they changed. Something came over them. Those eyes weren’t human. The way they moved, it made my skin crawl. Bradley’s right. It was those helmets, somehow. They’re designed to control the Hive, to bring them into our reality, if only for a moment.”
