Page 80 of The Hive Queen

As the elevator slows to a stop, Pen steps in front of Flint, and I move to stand on his right, blocking him from view from any of the detectives in the squad room.

Sharpe hadn’t been home when we woke up this morning, and we’d found a message from him to meet the team in the largest training room.

When we step inside, Sharpe already stands at the front of the room with the large desk pushed off to the side.

He glances at us in greeting, dark circles under his eyes but his face free of any stubble. He’d taken the time to change his shirt, too, though his suit shows signs of the long night he spent at the crime scene, with wrinkles in the fabric and dirt at the cuffs of his slacks.

His dark-brown hair, too, shows signs of stress, the strands refusing to remain swept back from his face, like he’d run his hand through it too many times for it to obey being styled.

It’s hard to tell if his current state is from lack of sleep or a result of whatever went down in his meeting with Chef Lynch this morning, and with his subordinates in the room, there’s no way to ask.

Mayn perches at one of the individual desks that face the front, a notebook open in front of her. While she looks better rested than her partner, the tense alertness with which she observes the room leaves me worried about how fast her restraint will snap. The tight coil of her dark hair wiggles against the confines of her braid, and the scent of salt permeates the air.

Troy and O’Hara lean against the wall, putting distance between themselves and the siren. There’s a reason they have the highest kill count when it comes to the dangerous akuzal that slip through the breaks in the veil to hunt humans. Their instincts as hunters recognize a dangerous predator in their midst.

Johannsson slumps in a desk behind Mayn, his tie loose around his neck and stubble on his cheeks heavy enough that it will be the beginning of a beard before nightfall.

His brown eyes flick over us, pausing on Flint, and his lips part.

“You’re looking ragged, Paul,” Pen says, stepping in front of our wounded witch. “These long nights must be taking a toll on you. You’re not as young as you used to be.”

He scowls and looks away. “Screw you, Cay. I’ll still be running laps in a few hours while you’re napping.”

“Let’s save that energy for hunting down the being responsible for what happened last night,” Sharpe says with a stern look at both Pen and Johannsson.

As we find seats near the back, a few more people filter into the room, then Sharpe closes the door and dims the lights.

“Let’s get right down to it.” He pulls a remote from his pocket and turns on the overhead projector.

An image of a humanoid woman with large eyes and a pearly veil across the bottom of her face appears on the screen. “This is our primary target.”

Sharpe must have returned to the cabin long enough to grab the information from the books on the dining table before leaving again.

Johannsson lets out a low whistle. “We’re going to get a lot of calls if we put that out to the media. People like a pretty woman, even one who kills.”

Sharpe clicks a button on the remote, and the image changes to the same woman, but now without the veil. The bottom of her face ends in four pincers, and a long tongue hangs from her mouth.

Johannsson grunts. “Why are men going home with that?”

Sharpe uses the laser on the remote to point at the image. “This is called a Hive Queen.”

He clicks another button, and a full body image appears, displaying her disproportionate figure from the drawings. Another click shows the grainy photo Amalia caught of the Hive Queen with her last victim.

“To answer your question, Johannsson, as to why men would be lured in by this creature, she uses pheromones to ensnare her victims, and venom that both paralyzes and acts as an aphrodisiac.” He clicks the remote again, and images of her previous victims appear on the screen. “Once she collects her specimen, she destroys her victim to eliminate the risk of other predators mating with them.”

The men in the room all shift uncomfortably.

“Based on what happened last night, her focus is restricted to men with witchblood.” Gazes in the room shift to Flint, but Sharpe keeps speaking, drawing their attention back to him. “Which brings us to our next problem.”

He clicks the remote, and the image of the man on the roof from last night appears on the screen.

Sharpe uses the laser pointer to direct everyone’s attention to the red mass on the back of the man’s neck. “Those the Hive Queen does not mate with are turned into drones, with a single-minded directive to bring her more men with witchblood.”

The slide changes to a hospital record. “We identified this man as Dominick Estival. His wife brought him to the ER six nights ago. He had been stung, and the wound was severely infected. She reported him missing two nights ago.”

“So, there’s a four-day window between infection and full conversion,” O’Hara says. “Has a cure been found?”

Sharpe’s eyes shift to Pen. “Fire is the only thing we know of that works so far, but it’s not viable for most people. The venom is injected close to the spine. Even if it’s eradicated, it would leave the victim paralyzed.”

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