He told me she approached with a smile and with her hands raised in the air. “I’d like to give you my stakes,” she told him, removing the entire holster and throwing it so that it landed at his feet. He was suspicious of her and sent someone to fetch me. But in the time it took me to run from my home to his, she’d already gotten under his skin. Or maybe Asa just realized he could use her to get under mine.
In the distance, a rider approached. Asa rushed down the steps and out the front door, leaving it wide open. I followed, but kept my distance. My only interest was in making sure Eve was safe.
The rider delivered a letter to my brother and dismounted. “Guide your horse to the barn and let him eat and drink before you leave.” The young man thanked Asa and led his gelding toward the barnyard. Asa broke the seal and unfolded the letter. “We’re to receive some rather interesting company, brother. We should hurry with repairs.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Half the Continental Army, or so it will feel like,” Asa replied dryly.
Inwardly, I groaned. “Benjamin?”
“Unfortunately.”
Brigadier General Robert Benjamin travelled with a rather large entourage. Soldiers, he would call them. I would describe them as uniform-clad servants. He was the sort of man I would travel miles out of my way to avoid, just so I didn’t have to listen to him speak about himself. The only other thing that mattered to him was the war, but only because his position gave him authority and clout.
“I wonder what he wants.”
“He wants my company, and many more like them,” Asa replied truthfully.
Benjamin would’ve caught word of the company of monsters who attacked the British as they slept, leaving no survivors.
I recalled Eve asking once what the red flag meant when my ship hoisted it as a warning to Hornigold. While our sailing days were over and we no longer sailed under a crimson banner, whenever Asa saw red on the coats of men who thought they owned us, he took it as a personal challenge to end those who wore it.
Since America had to survive so that in the future, it would fall, and Eve would rise as its phoenix from its ashes… I had to ensure the fledgling country won its declared independence. So for the first time in thousands of years, Asa and I worked together under a common cause and toward a common goal.
I glanced over to catch Eve’s eye, but she was gone. So was Titus.
Titus
When the rider appeared and spoke to Asa, and as Enoch lingered nearby like a total obsessed creeper, Eve grabbed my hand. She pressed a finger to her lips and tugged me around the house, past the kitchens and into the garden, stopping along the hedges.
She raked errant strands of hair out of her face, shifting her weight back and forth on the balls of her feet. It was what she did when she was nervous, like before a sparring match or before entering the arena for a challenge. Some of the challenges I’d inexplicably forgotten were starting to come back. The images were vivid, the emotions so real, I wasn’t sure how I could possibly have forgotten. I had a feeling Kael was to blame.
“We have to go. We need to jump,” Eve whispered, her voice harried.
I ticked my head back in surprise. “What, like right now?”
She nodded intently.
“You’ve barely had a chance to spend any time with Enoch since he arrived. What happened?” Not that I was complaining. But if the guy hurt her somehow, so help me…
“Nothing,” she was quick to answer.
“Then why the sense of urgency?” It’s not that I was opposed to jumping and trying to get home, but this was out of the blue, even for Eve.
A tear fell from her eye. She swiped it away quickly, but I wrapped her up in a hug. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”
She took a shuddering breath and pulled away. “The only thing we’re doing each time we jump is hurt them. Our presence, our influence, is what’s making them monsters.”
“They were already monsters when we jumped the first time,” I reminded her. “We aren’t responsible for that.”
“We are,” she insisted. “They became vampires on their own, but that was without armies of clones slaughtering everyone they loved, without us pushing them. Everything we’re doing is making them bigger monsters than they otherwise would have been, and making ourselves monsters, too. Think of all the people we’ve killed.”
“Other than the vamps last night, which we protected innocents from by killing, we,” I clarified, flicking a finger between me and her, “haven’t killed at all. You and I haven’t hurt any innocent people in this process. I can’t say the same for Abram, but that’s a separate issue. Eve, we can’t control what the clones do. We can’t control what Victor does, and we aren’t responsible for what he did or what he will do. He’s unpredictable, at best.”
“He’s not unpredictable at all,” she argued. “He’s trying to make them so angry, they don’t think before they strike. It’s one of his tactics. Distract the opponent, over and over again, so they don’t know where the final blow will come from and they don’t even see it coming until it’s too late to block it.”
“Don’t you want to at least talk to him before we go?” I asked, feeling sure she’d regret jumping without saying goodbye or telling him why we had to go.
She shook her head. “I think the best thing for him would be to never see me again.”
I pulled her in for another hug. Lord knows she needed it. “That’s not true,” I said gently, my chin bumping against her head with every word. “I think you just might be his saving grace. You might be what keeps him from tearing the world apart.”
She nodded rapidly, blinking away more tears.
“And I sincerely hope that if we make it home, things are changed for the better because of your influence on him. But if they aren’t, then I hope they still sell popcorn in the mess hall, because I want to chomp on it as I watch Enoch peel Victor’s skin off.”
She finally laughed, but the laughter died quickly.
I wondered if she was thinking of how bloody Enoch was after the hunt. Asa didn’t have a speck of blood on him; Enoch looked like he’d bathed in it.
The sound of a throat clearing startled both of us. Enoch’s sharp eyes watched us from the corner of the house, and I wasn’t sure how much he’d heard or if he could tell she’d been crying. The way he looked at me would’ve made a lesser man piss himself, but I was beyond caring what the Nephilim thought of mine and Eve’s friendship.
Eve
Talk to him, Titus mouthed before walking away.
My clone’s room hadn’t burned, so I’d taken the plainest of her dresses. Now, it felt too tight. Or maybe that was my ribs constricting my lungs.
Enoch strode to me. He wore breeches with stockings underneath, and a loose, eggshell-colored shirt that fluttered in the light breeze. There wasn’t a part of him that wasn’t smudged with soot. He looked perfect.
When he reached me, he wrapped me in his powerful arms and kissed me. He threaded his fingers into my hair and craned my head back, pouring all of himself into it. When he pulled away, he placed his forehead against mine. “Please don’t leave yet.”