“Is everything okay?” He was kneeling down in front of the girl again, but the question was clearly for Alex.
“Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Damon nodded, turned back to Laurie, and squeezed her hands in his. He lowered his head, closed his eyes, and a flash of color passed from his hands to the girl’s.
“Alex, are you watching?” Damon whispered.
She sighed and observed him taking a deep breath. When he released it, the flash of color was back-amber-and forming an aura around their joined hands.
Alex felt the urge to move forward, but instead, she blinked a few times when the shimmer spread until it surrounded Laurie and Damon entirely. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes, until the light gradually receded back into Damon’s hands, as if it had never been there.
He opened his eyes in a rush and sucked in a breath.
“What the hell just happened?” It had only taken a few minutes, but she could tell he had experienced something.
Damon released Laurie’s hands and stood. “I just saw everything as she did.”
“Well, what did she see?” As unlikely as it sounded, she wanted to know what had obviously spooked him so much.
“As we suspected, Laurie walked in on the attack.”
Alex sighed. “So, you know who did it, then?”
He met her eyes, and his darkened. “Not entirely.”
“What do you mean?”
He took a few steps toward her. “Alex, some sort of animal attacked Mony Lin.”
“That’s a good thing, right? It means you were right. No one in Eden is capable of doing what we saw left discarded in the gardens, and that’s a good thing. Isn’t it?” She didn’t understand what the problem was with this scenario. “It was one of your wildlife.”
Damon shook his head. “No, Alex. We don’t have any wildlife withinthe walls. I thought I’d already told you that. Besides, this looked more like some sort of beast, which explains the lust and excitement it felt for the victim’s flesh.”
“What do you mean by a beast?” The wall behind her suddenly felt too solid, as if it was the only thing keeping her up but would soon close in around her.
“Alex, some sort of beast attacked Mony Lin with the intention of tearing him apart and feasting on his flesh,” Damon answered.
He was watching her too closely. She tried not to wince.
“There’s no way you could know all that just by touching someone’s hand.”
A chuckle escaped him. “After everything I’ve already shown you, you still question what I can do? You’re a hard woman to please.”
She wanted to tell him that wasn’t true. After all, he’d given her a lot of pleasure when he’d laid his hand upon her abdomen. One quick glance at the girl stopped her, though.
Now isn’t the time to get us back on that track.
She kept looking into his eyes but didn’t say anything.
“I know what I saw. I felt the residue of the beast’s craving, and watched him kill and tear into a person.” He pushed a few dreadlocks away from his face. “We have some sort of animal loose within our walls, and I have no idea how that’s possible.”
“You said no one could get through.”
“They can’t.”
“I did!”
“You came through with me.”
“What if something broke through at the same time?” Alex had an eerie feeling crawling through her body.
“No, I would’ve felt it. No one can cross in and out of the walls without me.”
“Really?” That seemed a little odd.
“Yes.”
“What about the roaring beast we heard out in the jungle?”
Damon took another step. “I’ve lived here all of my life and have trekked around the entire planet, because Eden isn’t a very big place at all. In all my travels, I’ve never seen or heard a creature that roared.”
“We both heard it, right?”
He nodded, looking thoughtful.
None of this made sense, and as she pondered her own thoughts, something horrible struck her. What if whatever was loose in the gardens had somehow landed with her? She’d been carrying a lot of sealed barrels for Sackor, and she had no idea what was in any of them. After the incident with the worms penetrating her skin, who knew what else was in those barrels? She’d assumed it was liquid, some sort of lager or something, but there were ways to store animals in a similar way, right? After the crash, maybe something got out.
When she’d rushed out of the ship, she hadn’t even bothered to check the cargo area.
“Alex, is everything okay?”
She nodded absently. “So if we both heard the roar, there’s obviously an animal loose on this planet…” A vicious, hungry animal-one that happened to be outside in the jungle at the same time we were and somehow penetrated the walls. She couldn’t bring herself to add the last bit out loud. It raised too many questions.
Damon nodded. “It still doesn’t explain what it is.”
“What did this thing look like, anyway?”
“It was shaggy and wild, but I didn’t get a proper look.”
“Was it big?”
“The same size as a man. Why?”
She swallowed the lump in her throat, and released a quick breath. Surely something as big as a man couldn’t fit inside a barrel, could it?
Levi rushed into the room, shouting, “Damon, Damon!”
Alex jumped. His sudden appearance threw her line of thought out of whack.
“What’s wrong, Levi?”
The teenager stopped in front of him, bent over to take a few breaths, and said, “There’s been another attack!”
“Where?” Damon’s eyes darkened. “Wait a minute. Where’s Milo? He wasn’t attacked, was he?”
“No, he went to alert the Priestess.”
“Of course,” Damon said with a quick nod.
Levi was still trying to catch his breath, but he was now able to stand upright. “We were heading home after cleaning up and stumbled on a bunch of limbs, as well as some clothes.” Levi’s gaze strayed to the floor in front of him. “I think it was a man and a woman.”
“Damn it! No one was supposed to be in the area.” Damon pushed his hair back and away from his face. He looked angry and anxious. “You need to show me where it happened.”
Levi nodded. “Damon, I need to tell you something else, first…”
“What? There’s more?”
The teenager looked at Alex for just a moment, before holding up his closed hand in front of him. “We found something near the dead bodies.”