Tahlia met my eye and nodded slightly, acknowledging my shock. She could hear them too, had probably heard them before I could. She was further along in her flowering than I was in mine. She would be more sensitive to the pollen.

“If you’re going to kill us, consider this,” she said. “We never claimed to come in peace, because we do not. But we have wonders beyond the knowing of this world. If you were to escort us to our nearest ship, we could make it more than worth your while. No one would ever know—”

The gunshot was like thunder rolling across the desert. Tahlia made a faint choking sound, her hands rising to flutter around the wound in her belly like she thought she could somehow take it back, like she could stuff her life back inside, where it belonged.

There was no blood. Her blood had run out weeks ago. Instead, sap poured through the wound, thicker and more golden than I had ever seen, so golden it was visible even through the darkness. I could have seen it from the stars. It smelled sweet, like maple syrup or honey, the lifeblood of a tree from another world who had traveled a million miles to sprout in alien soil, only to die on the cusp of her own salvation.

“Shit!” shouted Paul. “They really are aliens!”

Lucas bellowed and charged the man at the lead. There was another gunshot, and Lucas fell, half of his head transmuted into a fine red mist. I screamed. Graham shoved me behind him, trying to shield me from what was about to happen to us all. Three more guns were cocked, sharp snaps against the night—

And the tendrils reached out of the darkness, wrapping themselves around the men. Throats, torsos, faces, it didn’t matter: when they hit one of our attackers, they grabbed hold and squeezed tight.

The leader, who was far enough ahead of the others to have a few precious extra seconds to react, lunged forward and grabbed Tahlia’s arm. She didn’t fight. She was losing too much blood—sap—and seemed barely capable of staying on her feet. She’d been shot twice in one night, and this time, a syringe of human blood wasn’t going to save her.

He pressed his gun against her temple, howling, “Make it stop! Make it fucking stop, or I’ll blow her alien brains out, I swear to God!”