A close friend happened to be that skeleton tonight.
Taking the quickest but most shadowed route, I made my way into the belly of the Compound. The steel door opened as I approached. I should’ve known she’d be watching.
“Yarrow,” I greeted as I stepped inside.
The room was a cavern, held up by a single steel column. Every wall held a series of projections from the various cameras positioned around the place. Yarrow rolled her chair backward. The vibrant, yellow fabric seat upholstery was the second brightest thing in the room, dimmed only by her smile.
Her sweatshirt was three sizes too big, the pale blue a stark contrast to her silky, ebony skin. “Maru.” She stood and gave me a quick hug and kissed my cheek. “No word yet?”
“None.”
“Let’s see if we can weave a sticky enough web to catch a few flies, then.” She rolled back to the control panel and placed a set of rectangular panes on her face, glancing up and down as she used her mind to scroll through the data and footage.
“I’ve already looked at the footage of their flight. It was legit. But you know that, because you were there…” she giggled. “They’re alive, or at least that’s what Kael thinks. And if Kael thinks it, it’s probably true. He’s been watching them.”
“Watching?”
“Not… watching, exactly. Not like a video or a tracker,” she mumbled, her eyes working up and down and back and forth, processing the information she was tapping into. “Whoa. Whooooaaaa. This is weird.”
“What is it?”
“They only went back seven days, right?” she asked.
“That was their mission, to land at the recent Vampire gala. Each Asset was supposed to strike their target and run. That was more than seven days ago, yet no attack or disturbance was broadcast. However, if something went wrong, they would be in hiding. Or, they might have been injured.” I took a deep breath and scrubbed my face. “If she’s alive, she’s in trouble. I need to know where to find her.”
Yarrow shook her head. Her mouth gaped open, as if she couldn’t hold in all the information she was processing. “All the data I’m seeing says exactly what you just said, but there’s a second layer of encryption here. Something more complex… something hidden. There’s a mountain of data here; we just can’t see the answers yet.”
My stomach sank, because if Yarrow couldn’t help, no one else could or would. “You can’t crack it?”
She gave me a look that said Watch and learn. “This might take a while, but I will break in.” Yarrow loved a challenge for the simple joy that came from accomplishing something new, and the harder the puzzle, the more she fought to solve it.
I crouched down and waited quietly as she worked.
Eve
When I came to, Titus and Enoch were hovering over me and I was laying on something soft that smelled like my favorite Nephilim. I turned my head to look at my surroundings, seeing Titus grin. “Sleeping Beauty has awakened,” he announced formally.
Enoch watched us carefully, his green eyes making it hard to look at anything else. He was so tall, his head almost hit the ceiling beams.
Sleeping Beauty felt like she’d been run over by a truck. And when did Titus find me? How long have I been out? “What happened?”
“You blacked out,” Titus said, “and I took advantage of the opportunity to fix your tech.”
I held the back of my hand up and sure enough, the tech was glowing once again. I lay on a small bed, and on a nearby bedside table sat the bag of coins Edward gave me. The dress I’d stolen was draped over the back of a nearby chair.
I curled my fingers into a fist and then stretched them out a few times. “Did you take a hammer to it?” I joked, wondering if he actually had. Not that it was bruised, or even sore.
“Not exactly,” he winced. “But I think that when we get home, I can add the title of ‘surgeon’ to my repertoire. That’ll impress the ladies.”
“You should unlink us, Titus. My broken tech must be the reason we didn’t make it home.”
Enoch, who’d been silently watching our conversation, finally spoke up. “You will do no such thing,” he warned Titus.
Titus looked at me and dramatically rolled his eyes. Then he turned to Enoch. “I wouldn’t have done it anyway, big guy. No need to get upset.”
“I am not upset,” Enoch enunciated.
“We know that. We know what you do when you get angry, and my throat, for the moment at least, is intact.”
Butterflies took flight in my stomach. Was it possible he still cared? Or that he didn’t completely hate me? My heart thundered just watching him warn Titus against unlinking us.
And then the butterflies fell silent and dread coiled into my belly. Maybe Enoch just wanted me to leave and that was why he wanted us to remain linked.
A groan came from outside the doors, giving voice to the way I felt. A moment later, the twin wooden panels parted and Edward walked stiffly into the room. Outside, it looked like it had been storming. The sky was still roiling, but it wasn’t nearly as angry as I was. He pushed the doors closed as I sat up. I grabbed the small bag of coins he’d given me, launching it at his head. Coins flew from the bag as it tumbled toward him, clattering across the floor. He tried to turn away from me at the last minute, so the bag connected with the back of his head in a glancing blow. Not nearly as satisfying as the dull thud of a direct hit would’ve been, but I’d take it.
“Ouch!” he growled, grabbing his skull. “What was that for?”
Enoch took a step toward the pirate, but I didn’t need him to fight my battles.
“What was that for?” I leapt up and started across the room. “You’re a coward, Thatch.”
He straightened his back and tugged tightly on the lapels of his sopping wet jacket. “I’ve been called worse,” he retorted indignantly, raising his chin a touch.
Enoch crossed the room to stand beside me and smiled cruelly at Edward. “Let Terah deal with our friend.”
For a second, it felt like it did back in thirteen forty-eight. Like Enoch and I were on the same side and he didn’t hate the very sight of me.…
“You and Terah, huh?” I asked, considering the couple.
“Once upon a time, but not any longer,” Edward answered primly.
“And I thought she had good taste.”
Edward’s eyes narrowed at my comment as Titus snickered behind me. I turned to look him over, noting the ragged tear on the stomach of his suit. Some of the circuits around the damage were dim. “Does your suit still work?”
“Worked well enough to get me here,” Titus answered with a slight shrug.
“And Abram? Did he heal, too?”
Titus shrugged. “I assume he did, but I haven’t seen him.”
I turned to Enoch. “You haven’t seen him, have you?”
He shook his head. By the sharpness in his eyes, it looked like Enoch had definitely not seen Abram. I wondered, in the years after the attack, if he looked the same way when someone mentioned my name.
Could he find it in his heart to forgive me for something I hadn’t done? Could he put away the centuries of hatred and somehow remember how he felt before Victor ripped everything to shreds? Could he love me again?