When Earth is conquered by the sinister Greys and the alien who killed Evie's husband returns seeking her help, she must find a way to enact her revenge and fight the growing feelings for the creature who is an exact replica of the man she loved.
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The basement below St. Paul's Cathedral School was a bleak, dank space that reeked of damp, stale air and the sweat of too many people crammed together in such close quarters. It was bad enough that we had fallen into Levi's clutches and had to stand here with so many guns trained on us, without feeling the claustrophobic crush of being surrounded on all sides by Levi's people with very little space in which to move between us and them.
I was too aware of the menace emanating from the granite stares of his crew. Too aware of the bristling tension that crowded the air like static to the skin. Too aware of Tom's arm pressed against mine as we were hemmed in together, like the runt dogs of the litter about to be savaged in the cruellest of dog fights, our imminent deaths to serve as entertainment for the baying crowd.
Not that they were vocally baying, mind you. Even in your own lair, you'd be mad to raise too much noise. You never knew what was close by, listening. I'd forced us to learn that lesson the hard way.
Strangely, their silence was harder to bear. Waiting for our inevitable fate seemed so much worse when no one was saying a damn word. Not that they really needed to. I felt every last bit of their disdain and hatred in each face I could see and yet, as I stared back at them, my eyes desperate not to miss a thing, I saw something else in their expressions.
Resignation. Exhaustion. A sense of defeat I hadn't seen the last time we'd encroached on Levi's territory.
Although our fracas had been swift and violent – a real shock to the system when all we'd wanted was sanctuary, and instead finding nothing but hostility – I'd been almost knocked sideways by their strength and their will to survive. It had oozed out of their pores, this powerful air of authority that said fuck-you-we're-here-to-stay. And I'd always believed that if any of us survivors were going to say a mighty fuck you to the Greys, it was going to be Levi's people.
But, now? Now they looked like the epitome of a beaten species. Haggard. Weary down to their bones. Skin too sallow; too grey, as if they hadn't seen daylight in months. Their eyes told stories of a thousand hardships; a thousand battles lost.
Of course, back then, the first and last time we'd been through here, we'd never been granted an audience in his base and had only found out the location through one of our first meetings with Lena.
Even I was surprised by the numbers here. There were so many of them, survivors of differing ages from the very young to some who could have rivalled Ivy on the Telegram from the Queen race. It made more sense to me now why the ex-bouncer-turned-survivor-boss had been so insistent on us moving on and not lingering in his Quadrant. When you had this many people to protect and provide for, how could you ever justify allowing even just one more person into your area to steal away whatever dregs were left in the ruins of London?
Maybe that was it. Maybe they were surviving on dregs. Maybe rations were running dry and they were finding it harder to care for so many? God knows, we were finding it hard enough, but we'd been lucky and there wasn't so many of us to provide for as it was for Levi's crew.
