Evading my question, she snapped, “You’re wearing a gown and sitting like a man. You’ve done no research on this time period. Why would they even send you?”
“Answer my question.”
“Asa is attracted to me. I used that to my advantage.” She tossed her head and flipped her hair back over her shoulders haughtily.
“Asa is attracted to everyone, sweetheart.”
She cocked her head to the side and gave me a bored look. “I don’t know why you’re down here, but if you aren’t going to untie me, just leave. I can’t stand to look at you.”
“You can’t stand to look at me? How do you think I feel?” I fired back.
“Well,” she cooed, “you don’t seem very bright, so I’m going to assume you’re not. Now, I’m extremely close to accomplishing a goal I’ve been working toward for nearly a year. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay in your lane – which, in case you don’t understand, that means stay far, far away from Asa and let me finish what I came here to do.”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you.”
She growled. “You will not keep me from this! I was born for this. I was made for it.”
“Made for what?”
“To do what no one else has been able to!” she whisper-yelled.
“To stake Asa?” I snorted. “You aren’t even close. No matter how much you think you’re in control of him, or of your sordid relationship, you aren’t.”
“Oh, I am,” she boasted. “I’m so close I can taste it.”
“You actually want to be turned?”
Her smile fell away. “Of course I do.”
“Why do you want to do that?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Her tone grew suspicious and I could feel the distance she was forcing between us. “That’s why we were sent.”
“We were sent to strike down the firsts,” I countered.
She scoffed. “No, we weren’t. Only the top Assets were given that task, and they failed miserably. We were sent to collect…” she trailed off.
“Collect what?” I prodded.
She choked out a harsh laugh. “You can’t possibly be her.”
I gave her a wide smile and nodded.
“Let me see your mark,” my clone demanded.
“I have no mark, sweetheart. I’m the real thing.” I held my wrists up for her to see, rotating them all the way around.
She paled. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Don’t vomit on your dress. It’ll stink for days.”
“How can you be here? In this time?”
“I wish I knew.” Not that I’d tell her what was going on, even if I did know. If the clones I pushed over the cliff landed back in our time, maybe Victor knew I sent them. Then again… maybe he didn’t.
“How many of you have returned home?”
“None, as far as I know, but my knowledge is limited,” she answered.
“But you’re supposed to collect venom and then jump back home?”
“That’s our mission, yes. I want to be the first – the only, if I can.”
She was just like I had been. Driven. Thirsty for revenge. She enjoyed hearing her name whispered on the lips of lower Assets, for them to not only respect but fear what she was capable of. She wanted to be the best, to look down at everyone else from the top. Did they give her the same false memories they gave me? The thought made me sick.
“Eve, please don’t leave me down here,” she pleaded sweetly as I stood and put the chair back in its place.
“You only want Asa’s venom, or I guess I should say Kael wants their venom. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why.”
She growled and began hopping around again. “Let me loose!” she howled.
“Nope,” I replied, turning on my heel and striding away. Thinking twice about her big, fat mouth, I grabbed the wad of fabric from the floor and shoved it back into her mouth, then secured it with the fabric hanging around her neck to keep the wad securely in place. When she tried to bite me, I grabbed her hair and pulled her head back so she was forced to look at me. “I’ll send you home if you do that again,” I warned.
She tried to say something to the effect of You can’t do that, to which I replied, “Oh, yes I can. I’ve done it before. All I have to do is activate your tech before throwing you off something tall. You’re wearing your suit, right?”
I lifted the hem of her skirt just enough to see the circuitry glowing beneath the layers. “Oh, look at you. All ready to go home. All you need is to be bitten first. Well, I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.”
She panted and screamed as I took hold of the lantern, strolled toward the door, and ascended the steps that led out of the cellar. Leaving her in the darkness, my mind spun with the implications of my clone’s mission. Kael must be trying to develop an anti-venin. I needed to talk to Titus and tell him what the clones’ true purpose was.
Closing the cellar door, I used a nearby stick and rammed it through the door handles to lock it into place, then returned to the kitchen. The woman was gone, but Asa stood near the fire. “You did well.”
“I’m going to remove her hand tech so she can’t go home.”
“I should kill her,” he mused. “It would save us both the trouble of dealing with her. If you remove her only way home, she’ll forever be your enemy.”
“We both know I can’t stay here long.”
“Which will mean she will be my enemy – until she dies. Which brings the argument full circle, and me back to the assertion that I should just kill her and save everyone a great deal of agony.”
I closed my eyes. “Please don’t.” During my last time jump I’d plunged a stake through my own clone’s heart. I watched her – watched myself – die a horrible, probably very painful death. I didn’t want to see that ever again. “Besides, you owe me an answer.”
He stood up straighter. “I suppose I do.”
“Why do you and Enoch hate each other so much?”
Asa stiffened at the question. “I thought you’d ask what he’s been up to in your absence, but you never choose the obvious path, do you?”
“I guess not,” I bristled, trying not to let him get under my skin. I got him the information he was unable to get for himself. He owed me. And I would never take a path he pointed out to me. He’d just as soon kill me along with the clone.
“Enoch and I hate one another, because he is responsible for the death of a woman I deeply loved.”
“What happened? How is he responsible?”
“I’d prefer not to rehash the story.”
“You call that an answer?”
“It is equally as detailed as the one your clone provided me. I consider us even.”
“How’s your relationship with Enoch these days? I can’t imagine it’s gotten better since you decided to ask my clone to be your wife.”
Asa gritted his teeth. The sound tore at my ears.
He crossed the space between us. “And what lies are you telling my brother? He’s been worried for a bloody century because he thinks your body is failing, yet other than the slight swoon on the staircase, you seem perfectly healthy to me.”