Go.
Leave.
Get out of my sight.
Go back to your time.
Go home.
I glanced at Titus and walked toward the steps. My legs felt like they weren’t mine, ponderously heavy but numb. Trudging up the steps, I took a deep breath when I emerged into the fresh air. Down there, it felt like I was drowning again. In the middle of the sea. Unable to move. Unable to breathe. Unable to fight.
“I need to sit down,” I told Titus.
“Nope,” he argued. “Keep walking. We can stay outside, but you don’t need to watch what comes next.”
Emotion bubbled up from somewhere deep within, some place dark and greedy. Some place bloodthirsty. “The part where he buries the woman who could be my twin, you mean?” I exploded. “I hate Victor, and I hate Kael, and I just wish they would die! I want you to put her tech in my hand and let me go home so I can kill them myself, Titus. I want them to pay for what they’ve done. I can’t remember all of it, but I know the memories that are bubbling up only scratch the surface of what they’ve done to us.” Even though I knew I was becoming hysterical, I couldn’t stop the racing of my heart or mind. “I can’t even think straight right now. I can’t get them out of my head. I can’t get away from the clones. I can’t – Ahhh!”
Stomping heedlessly across the yard, I tripped over a limb and cut my knee on a sharp rock as I fell to the ground. Something sharp and hot sliced through my head.
“Eve!”
I held tight to my head until the intense pain stopped, replaced by an uncomfortable pressure that began building behind my eyes. “If you don’t help me, I’m going to die before I can go back and make this right.”
“Can you walk?” he asked, helping me stay upright.
“I think so, but I need your help.”
“Eve—” he stopped abruptly and blew out a breath. “Honestly, I’m terrified to put that thing into you. You’re not well. I don’t know what’s happening to you, but I’m worried that if I implant her tech in your body, it might kill you. I don’t trust Kael enough to chance it without trying to crack into her system first. The chips in the tech don’t hold a ton of information, but there’s basic data there and I want to take a look at it before we decide to do anything else.”
I tried to wave off his concerns. “I’m fine. I just bumped my head.”
Titus let go of me and I slumped over. “Looks like a lot more than that to me.” He gathered me up and carried me toward the house, remaining uncharacteristically quiet until he reached my room. He placed my feet on the floor and I held tight to him while he turned the knob and pushed the door open. When he tried to pick me back up, I swatted his hand away.
“Stop. Let me walk.”
I had only taken a handful of steps before my legs felt too heavy to walk on my own and my head seemed full enough to burst. Sidling beside me and throwing one arm around his shoulders, Titus acted as a crutch as I made my way across the room.
“Eve, look,” he began, “we have to get you home, and maybe the implant is the way, but I want to think this through before we do something that might hurt you. We need to know what, if anything, sets the clone’s tech apart from ours. What sets them apart from us, other than their tattoos and the fact that their mission in life is to gather venom? When we know as much as possible, we can make a decision about what’s best for you. Not what will ease your anger, not what will bring justice where it’s due, but what’s best for you, Eve. Get that through your stubborn head.”
He lowered me to the bed and I closed my eyes.
“I’m not going back to the attic,” he insisted, unlacing his boots. He kicked them off and dragged a small table to the window, hauling a matching chair across the room. Removing the tech from his pocket, he placed it on the table. “I’m going to find every candle I can and work in here. I’ll be right back.”
As he padded out of the room, I let the cool sheets chill my skin and the darkness ease the insistent throbbing of my head.
Chapter Six
Titus
I peeked in on her a few minutes later, comforted to hear her calm, steady breathing, a rhythmic inhalation and exhalation. Her heartbeat was slow and full. I pulled her door closed and crept back downstairs. I needed a sharp knife. I’d already tried to activate the clone’s tech with the dull knife I swiped from dinner earlier, and it wouldn’t power up. It needed a human host to draw energy from – ironic, given the plutonium patty laying in the middle of the damn thing. A disc strong enough to produce abundant power to punch us through space and time, but not powerful enough to act as its own battery.
The kitchens were a series of three small rooms built closely together behind the main house, which I supposed was to protect the living quarters in the event of a fire. The moon was directly overhead and mostly full, casting more than enough light to see by. I glanced into the first kitchen, seeing a cavernous room dominated by an enormous fireplace. A cluster of large, cauldron-like pots were situated all over the tile floor, and a long, wooden table with a smattering of onion skins lying on the tile beneath it was placed in the center.
There were only a few knives, none of them sharp enough for my comfort – not that what I was about to do would be comfortable. Baskets were piled high in the back corners of the room. All of them empty.
The second kitchen was much the same, except for the utensils hanging from wooden pegs along the back wall. I chose the smallest knives I could find and ran my thumb down the blades, finally finding one sharp enough to cleanly slice through the first layer of skin.
I jumped when I turned around to see Asa standing behind me.
“You’re bleeding,” he mused in a strange voice.
“Dude. Do not eat me. Don’t be the guy who just goes around eating people.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because guys like you should learn the art of self-control,” I argued. Maybe I was tired from landing. Maybe it was worry about Eve. Maybe I was just sick of dealing with the constant threat of being drained. I’d lived with it my whole life and it was getting old. I was sick to death of worrying about something I couldn’t control.
“How is Eve?”
“Why do you care?” I bristled.
“I don’t,” he answered, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Good, then I don’t need to answer you,” I shot back, stepping around him. He stepped in front of me again. “She’s fine, okay?” I growled. Before I could react, he grabbed my bleeding thumb and licked the wound. I wrenched my hand away, trying not to gag at the intimacy of the gesture. “That was… gross! Don’t ever lick me again without asking first. And in case you’re wondering what I would have said if you did ask, I would have said hell no. That was nasty.”
I couldn’t stop wiping my thumb on my waistcoat. Yuck.
Asa laughed. “Would you find it so disgusting if it were Terah who tasted your blood instead of me?”
“Absolutely not, but you, sir, are not Terah. I mean, I would find it repulsive to a point. She’s not nice. Like, at all – but she is hot. And by hot, I mean pretty, in case your ancient ass needs a translation. Good Lord, I’m standing in a dark kitchen babbling and you’re really hard to figure out. I figured you’d kill us if Enoch wasn’t around to rein you in, but here you are letting us stay here, and feeding us, and killing our clones.”