Though I was the one to find the bodies of my family, at least I didn’t see the vamps take their lives. It was a small mercy in the face of a tragic event.
Asa, Enoch, and Terah were hefting and throwing damaged furniture and parts of the ceiling and walls down from the upper rooms. Some of the attic and roof would have to be fixed, but one thing at a time.
I was working on a smaller project, just to get some distance from the boy. The Nephilim. Everything. The chicken coop I crashed through still hadn’t been repaired. Someone had put a blanket over the top of it to keep the birds in, but that wasn’t a permanent solution, and since I was the one who broke it, I figured I’d fix it. It shouldn’t take long, and it would give me something to do so I wasn’t near the three children. Plus, I couldn’t even look at the boy without damn near crying.
I found some wooden planks piled behind a garden shed at the back of Asa’s fancy garden with its perfectly-trimmed hedges and brick-laid paths, and then borrowed a hammer and a pocketful of nails. The sun was bright and hot, but it felt good to do something physical that didn’t require a lot of thought or analysis. It wasn’t a life or death battle, or a carefully planned game of strategy. It was just laying wooden planks down and hammering the hell out of the nail heads.
“You okay?” Eve asked, coming up behind me. I paused, holding a nail tip to the wood.
“Yeah, you?”
“Yeah,” she answered quietly, hesitation in her voice. “I want to talk to you alone later,” she hinted.
I nodded, peering up at the house just as a chest of drawers flew out of the window of the room Eve had been staying in. I hammered the nail in place, then turned to her. “How many memories do you have of your childhood?”
“What do you mean?”
“I have three,” I told her. “That’s all I can remember. Three things. So, Kael either took the rest, or he planted the ones I do recall. I’m not sure which is the case, but both theories piss me off.” My jaw muscle ticked in time with my hammer fall.
Eve was quiet for a long moment. She came and held the next two planks steady as I nailed them down. “One,” she finally answered.
“We were renamed, Eve. I don’t remember my given name, and I’m not sure why I never questioned it.”
“We were too busy.”
“Too busy to remember what was most important?” I asked in frustration.
“Too busy trying to survive what was happening to us. I think deep down, our mind or spirit knew what they did to us. I think it shut out the bad and kept the good at the forefront of our minds.”
“Maybe my family wasn’t killed at all,” I added. “Maybe I never had a family.” Suddenly, Eve put her hand in the way of my hammer. “I almost hit you.”
She grinned. “I would’ve moved out of the way if you swung. Look, Titus – I hate all the lies and the things they’ve done to us. The things I’m starting to remember, I’d give anything to forget, but they don’t take away the feeling behind the memory I have. I loved someone deeply at some point, and I lost them. I don’t know how. I don’t know if they were killed by vamps or if I was taken away from them, but the feeling of loss and the heartache I feel for the woman I was told was my mother is real. The pain I felt through her absence was real. It drove me to this point. The feeling couldn’t have been fake.”
I swallowed. She was right. “The feelings are real; I just… it’s hard to tell what’s truth and what they’ve lied to us about.”
“It’s coming back in pieces. Eventually, the truth will knit together for us.”
“I hope so,” I told her sincerely.
“Are you starting to remember things?”
I sat my hammer down and tore at my hair. “Terrible things,” I said so quietly, hopefully no snooping Nephilim heard it. Then, I remembered something I hadn’t gotten to ask her. “Hey, you know how your clone was trying to get Asa to bite her?”
She nodded.
“I remember Kael telling someone that the vampire venom was too diluted to be used. I guess he was talking about making an anti-venin then, but don’t remember anything else.”
Her brows kissed. “Maybe that’s why the vampires in our time look so terrible. I mean, some of them are strong and look almost normal, but others look like they’re dying, and they’re only strong if they feed. Maybe the venom gets more and more diluted as it’s passed along.”
“Could be.”
“This whole thing is such a riddle,” she grumped.
“One without a clear solution.” She wiped sweat from her brow, and I noticed for the first time that she looked unwell. “Is your suit working?” Mine was cooling me enough that I wasn’t sweating at all, despite the sun and work.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” she replied, too chipper.
“Show me your suit.”
She rolled her eyes and lifted her skirt leg. Sure enough, the suit’s circuitry glowed brilliant white, just like it was supposed to. Maybe Eve wasn’t lying. Still, she was acting weird.
“What did you want to talk about? We’re alone.”
She gestured to her ear and then pointed to the house. Whatever it was, she didn’t want Enoch to overhear, and that fact made me happy. I nodded. We’d talk later.
I kept hammering away, and she kept aligning and holding the planks until the coop’s roof was whole once again. It might not be as pretty as it was before I crashed through, but it was better than a blanket.
Maru
The Dead Zone was oddly quiet, not that I wouldn't expect a place with such a name to be exactly that, but the Delta unit was commanded to march into the area and take out any vampire they could find. I nudged Yarrow, who walked quietly beside me. Enoch walked briskly through the Dead Zone, bypassing crumbling building after crumbling building.
"Why is this part of town so degraded?" I finally asked.
Enoch glanced over his shoulder, making eye contact for the first time since we left the apartment. "Because your fearless leader instructed the military to set off bombs in an effort to keep the humans closer to the Compound. There were still humans here when he did it – people who didn’t want to leave their homes – but that didn't deter him from striking. I guess he considered them to be expendable. But to answer your question, in essence, he used explosives to draw a proverbial line in the sand. What he did not understand was that I refuse to be controlled by any man. I, and my sires, will unapologetically walk across his line whenever we please. If he builds a wall, I will tear it down.”
"Where are all the soldiers that were sent here earlier tonight?" Yarrow asked cautiously, removing the hat from her head and tossing it into a pile of broken bricks on the sidewalk.
"They've been given a choice, as have all the others – in case you've noticed that your military forces are dwindling by the day – to seek shelter in the haven we've created, or return to the Compound. We honor their decisions, but any weapons they carry are confiscated."
I couldn't help but laugh. "You're disarming and disbanding the military right underneath Victor's nose."
"Yes, I am," Enoch confirmed with a smile.