Page 15 of The Gathering
He looked at him, realizing his brother was seeing something.
“You need anything from me, Ma Eveque?” Nitro asked. Quieter. Hungrier.
Bishop met his gaze, finding his crazy simmering. “When I figure that out, I’ll let you know.”
Nitro leaned in, mouth at his ear. “I can help clear out clutter. Create just about any concoction I want. After biting Lesion, I gained quite a few of his skills.”
Everything in Bishop froze at that fucking news.
Fuck. What were they all becoming?
The dread in his bones hummed in his blood. They were in a spiral. Between humanity and whatever the fuck this was, what they’d tapped into. The bat bites, the fucking concoction Lesion made, now him being whatever the fuck he was.
He needed to unravel it all. Understand it. And fucking contain it before it couldn’t be.
“Zodak said bring him,” Seer announced, hanging up his phone. “He’s getting ready. Whatever’s happening, he’ll learn it. And he doesn’t need to touch him to do it.”
Ghosts In The Machine
8-Bit’s phone buzzed—three and a half sharp pulses. The odd pattern caught his attention, and he pulled it from his pocket.
What the fuck. Handy.
But it was the partial message that locked his muscles.You need to check on your wife and…He opened the full message, his pulse jammed.…those ghosts in the machine.”
Alarm collided with every one of his Cat fears that festered under her skin. He found her name with shaking fingers and hit the number, stalking away from ears.
Five rings later, an automated voicemail tripled his dread. “Cat, it’s Ethan. Where are you. Call me.”
He remembered the tracking in her wedding ring and pulled up the app. His breath left his lungs at seeing she was still at his place.
Check on those ghosts in the machine.
What the fuck did that mean?
“Where you going?” Hurricane called behind him.
“Check on Cat,” he called back, looking around for where the hell he was in relation to his boat. The second he found his bearing, he pulled up Handy’s number and hit send, jogging toward his Dragon.“Network error.”
Fuck.
He sprinted through the woods, every second, every breath a judgment against him. One he’d known was comingfor him. This was it. It was here. His own burial. The one he’d orchestrated with a cold, calculated distance from the woman he couldn’t live without. And the woman he refused to corrupt. All while praying and searching and begging for another way.
The nightmare ride to his home was a blur in slow-motion. His boots pounded the pier with premonition at finding no lights. No signs of life.
At the back door, sweat rolled under his leather jacket while his breaths battered his lungs. He closed his eyes, dread building with the scream of silence.
The familiar command to open his fortress escaped his mind while doom ticked off the seconds. “Tera, I’m home,” he blasted the second he remembered.
The locks disengaged with, “Welcome back to your swamp fortress, Ethan. As the guardian of the Horde, your sanctuary is always ready for you. What’s the play?”
Big G’s voice brought a twist to his guts as he searched to detect this ghost in the machine hiding in it.
He entered and looked at Cat’s signal on the app again. Still there.
“Al,” he called quietly, looking around the clean, empty kitchen. “Where’s Cat?”
“Hello to you too stranger. Her tracking shows she’s near. Maybe in your bedroom.”
