The crewmen who were keeping watch were no longer watching the sea.
Titus clutched his stake, ready to fight with me, likely to our deaths.
“You came to our doorstep,” Terah snarled. “You brought the fight to us. Your kind slaughtered people we loved, and somehow through it all, my brother thinks you’re innocent. Well, I’m not so certain.” One moment, Terah was a few feet away, and the next, she blurred and stopped behind me. I slowly turned to face her. “Things would be better if you were gone,” she growled. “The years before you came were the best of my life. Then the three of you showed up and wreaked havoc, claiming we were the ones to blame! Well, I’m sorry, but I beg to differ.”
Enoch emerged from the crew’s quarters, the limp body of one of his crewman in his arms. “It’s not her fault, Terah.”
“Then whose fault is it?” she screeched. “Tell me, brother. Whose fault is all of this? Would we have made any vampires at all if it wasn’t for her?”
“She didn’t make us turn anyone.”
“She planted the first seed by suggesting we could. We were innocent, trying to help everyone we could, until she showed up and ruined everything. Because of her, we have no home. We live on these infernal ships, a rootless, pathetic existence, trying to avoid her kind. Well, I say no more. I say we wipe her kind from the earth, the way our kind was once purged.”
Enoch calmly walked to the railing and closed his eyes before letting a swell rise up and claim his friend. The body sank almost immediately. I remembered my clone and how she looked suspended in the water, like she was flying, before succumbing to the pull of the sea. Some of the men still watched, witnessing their friend get tossed into a watery grave.
“Sister, it is easy to blame others when we are forced to see the worst parts of ourselves. And her presence here suggests we would learn to sire vampires on our own without knowing the damage they might inflict on future generations. Terah, it was not Eve who killed William. You did that on your own. The bloodlust has gotten the best of you of late. You’re the only one who is responsible for your actions, no matter what truths might have been revealed, no matter how you are provoked, no matter what. You are responsible. You are free to feed and kill, but you are not free from the consequences of killing. There may not be justice on the sea, but I believe your victims will haunt you in a way nothing else will. The next time you feel out of control, please come to me. I will help you through it.”
Terah gave me a heated look that promised our little conversation wasn’t nearly over, and that we’d continue it when Enoch wasn’t around to interrupt.
“We sure as hell didn’t teach you about bloodlust. You were already learning all about it back at the castle. I saw you,” Titus started. “You didn’t kill the ones you fed from in private, when Enoch was busy actually doing good for his people, but you weren’t taking a mere sip, either. You were barely in control then.”
“Blood is the only thing that makes me feel strong in a world that whispers I am weak,” she revealed.
The soft blur of Terah’s pale blue dress was all I could see as she ran away, disappearing below deck where she would crawl into her dark place. I wondered if she’d ever come out of it.
Titus put his stake away and I holstered mine, too.
“Would you have used it on her?” Enoch asked.
“I know she’s your sister and I know how much you care about her, so I hope it never comes to it, but I will defend myself if I have to.” Enoch nodded, scrubbing a hand down his jaw. He knew my answer before he asked it. Terah could probably snap me like a twig, but I wouldn’t sit back and let her do it without a fight. If she came at me, I would defend myself.
“I hope it never does, either.” Enoch looked between me and Titus, and at that moment, a rift the size of the ocean seemed to stretch between him and us.
Enoch
Eve and I sat in silence. I ruminated on the things she suggested, the feelings we both admitted, and how utterly impossible all of this seemed. The ocean rose and fell as if she were asleep, breathing deeply. When she inhaled, the ship rose. When she exhaled, it fell.
Before dawn, Terah emerged from below deck, lingering until she caught my eye. She wanted to talk. I’d seen that apologetic look a thousand times. No doubt I’d see it a thousand more.
Eve looked between us. “I’ll go check on Titus.” She strolled across the deck, her eyes meeting my sister’s as she passed her.
When Eve disappeared, Terah walked toward me. “I’m sorry I took William’s life.” She burst into tears again, sobbing into the hand pressed over her mouth.
“These men trust me to keep them safe, Terah. To give them what they need to survive. None have had easy lives. None of them are saints, but not a single one of them deserves to die by your teeth, either.”
“I know that.”
“Why didn’t you turn him?”
She stared at me for a long moment. “I haven’t sired a vampire yet.”
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes, but beyond that, I… I can’t even think when I’m hungry. It’s like I step out of myself until I’m full. I hate it.”
“So, you don’t think about your venom, only the thirst…”
“She may be below deck, but she can still hear you,” Terah whispered.
“I know.” Eve and I would have no secrets. Secrets were like cobwebs. They began with a single, seemingly innocuous strand, and built into a filth that marred what once was beautiful. Eve and I needed to have a serious discussion about our futures and fates. Titus was adamant that she needed help no one in this time could provide, which meant she must return to her own time, despite her protests. And I would have to let her go… and find her again then.
She seemed well enough now, but was she – was I – willing to risk her life? If something went wrong after Titus and Abram left…
No. I couldn’t allow it.
I’d have to learn all I could about where she would be and how to reach her before tragedy befell her. Maybe I could protect her mother and keep Eve from being made into an Asset. I could keep her out of Victor Dantone’s clutches and shield her from Kael Frost’s cruelty.
Terah’s tears dried. “How can you do it?”
“Do what?”
“How can you love her, knowing what she is? What she’s capable of?”
I thought of giving her the most obvious answer: that Eve was doing the same thing with me. She’d once described me as an arrogant monster, a man determined to rend her world and in so doing, take away everything and everyone she held dear. In the end, it was simpler; far more basic than an equivocal emotion like trust.
“Isn’t that what love is? Giving your heart to someone, knowing only they have the power to make it bleed? Because no one else on the earth matters as much as them. Even with the knowledge that heartache is assured, our hearts are willing sacrifices.”
Terah was quiet for a long moment. She loved Edward Thatch. She’d never admit it aloud now that he’d carved out a piece of her heart and thrown it into the depths, but she loved him. I could see it in the way she sought him out first when she knew he was in the room. The way she raged against him. And then there was the fact that he still drew breath. If it had been anyone else, any other man or woman, Terah would have drank them dry and crushed every bone in their bodies before sending their limp carcasses to the briny depths. But Edward was below deck, still breathing. Still shackled, but that didn’t bind the sharpest weapon he had: his tongue.