High Society

by Bond, Casey

  “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.

  "And you're not turning them into vampires?" Yarrow asked suspiciously, her arched brows raised.

  "Absolutely not."

  "Why not?" she questioned.

  Enoch paused for a moment. "I've seen enough death. I'd prefer to avoid war. But I've also learned that some things are worth fighting for."

  "Eve?" I blurted.

  "Absolutely," he confirmed. "I love her, Maru. I am in love with her. And I will do anything in my power to make sure that Victor Dantone and Kael Frost never hurt her again."

  With fierce determination burning in his eyes, he waved us forward and we continued our trek across the forbidden parts of Verona. We never passed a single member of the military. Either most, if not all, had defected to the Haven, or Enoch was lying about giving them a choice. Either way, I didn’t think he was lying about his feelings for Eve. There was a severity about him, a sharp otherworldliness in his manner, and when he said he loved her and would protect her even if it meant bringing a war to Victor and the Compound, I believed him. And I was glad Yarrow and I were safe now.

  The tech in my hand itched as the skin continued to thread back together. At the edge of the Dead Zone, there was a distinct line where the destruction and rubble ended. The remainder of the city’s outskirts remained untouched, except for the ravages of time and weather. Victor had bombed a circle around his Compound, but left more outside than in. The buildings were shorter and single family homes in long rows became the norm.

  There were tall lights casting wide orange circles of light on the streets around them. The children took advantage of the artificial light, laughing and skipping over long ropes swung in arcs. One rubbed the belly of a yellow dog. I wondered if the family who lived in the apartment I borrowed had managed to make it here. Maybe they were happy and safe.

  “Are they all human?” I asked gently.

  Enoch nodded a response. “We’ve entered the Haven.”

  Humans near the Compound didn’t venture outside at night. Here in the Haven, they played in the darkness under the streetlights. It had been a long time since I heard anything as carefree as a child’s laugh.

  Sure, sometimes Eve would say something sarcastic and make me smile, but this was different. Here, there was no pressure to perform, smothering your every thought. Here, kids could be kids and enjoy simple things. They played together in groups, parents watching from porch steps or doing chores while the kids played. A woman washed laundry in a tub while another hung the laundered clothes on a line. At another house, a man cooked meat over a stone grill, flipping the sizzling steak to keep it from burning. It smelled delicious. Better than anything I’d been served at the Compound.

  Yarrow looked around, her mouth agape.

  “This is insane. If people knew…”

  “We’ve broadcast it, but the feeds keep getting blocked.”

  I shook my head. “Victor wouldn’t want this broadcast. The people would call for his execution, and rightly so.”

  “Dantone is trying to clutch onto whatever power he thinks he has left. I intend to strip it from him entirely, and Kael Frost’s as well,” Enoch declared casually.

  I wondered what would happen then. Would he seize power for himself? Isn’t that why his kind overthrew the government and fed their way through the country to begin with? To take power away from the humans who held it?

  I wasn’t defending Victor. I could never in good conscience do that, but I also wasn’t ready to put my complete, blind trust in Enoch – despite what Eve said in her letter.

  “What are the rules? What payment must be made to stay here in safety?” I asked.

  Enoch slowed his pace, separating me and Yarrow. “We ask nothing from those who stay but that they behave in a respectful way to the other inhabitants. Obviously murder, theft, assault, rape, and things of that sort are not tolerated. Otherwise, the humans have formed neighborhood groups to sort squabbles. We mostly stay out of their business unless there is a major offense.”

  “And then? What happens if someone murders someone, for instance?”

  “Number one, we haven’t had that occur yet, but we have had lesser crimes occur. The punishment is banishment. If the offender sneaks back into the Haven, the penalty is death.”

  “Meaning you turn them?” I asked to clarify.

  “No, meaning one of us snaps their necks. It’s swift and mostly painless.”

  I swallowed thickly, hoping he wouldn’t snap mine if I jumped and returned without Eve for some reason.

  “So, it’s just… neighborhoods of people,” Yarrow surmised as we strolled through the streets. People were starting to pack things in and retire to their homes for the night. Mothers waved in their children. Fathers shut the doors and closed the blinds. Kids told their friends goodnight.

  “Where are all the vampires?” I asked.

  “There are plenty,” he hedged, “but they only attack when and if I, or one of my siblings, instruct them to. And only at night, of course.”

  “You’re telling me you can control the vampires?”

  Enoch smiled, but didn’t verbally confirm my assumption. Victor had no idea he could do that. Neither did Kael. My mind clicked back to the vampire in the loading dock. Enoch sent him with a message for Eve. He was coming for her. He was sending an army to find her.

  At the time, we assumed it was a th
reat, that he’d learned Eve was a hunter assigned to stake him. But it was a promise, a vow to save her from Victor and Kael.

  Enoch loved Eve.

  The thought was hard to think, let alone comprehend. They couldn’t have been more opposite, which made me wonder how they’d fallen for one another.

  Enoch led us into town where the new invitees – A.K.A., the Delta Unit members – were being processed. “We take their weapons, record their names, and assign them a street. The rules are explained, just as I explained them to you, and they can choose from the available housing. Many of the former military members choose to stay together. Some are former Assets, from what I’ve gleaned.”

  I glanced down at the lines of men and women, waiting for their turn to be ushered into a new life. Some faces I recognized, many I didn’t.

  None of them looked angry, like they’d been taken here against their will. Mostly, they looked tired, relieved. Some even smiled.

  Chapter Twelve

  Enoch

  I broke apart the bed frame and hurled the pieces out the window. Asa had been unusually quiet. Terah was either brooding or pouting, I couldn’t tell which, but I was glad she was in the next room. As I approached the window, I saw Eve talking to Titus near the chicken coop they were repairing.

  “I underestimated them,” Asa said carefully.

  I scoffed, “They showed up in the thirteen-hundreds with glowing hands and suits, armed with pointy stakes. You shouldn’t have.”

  “Why do you think her double from seventeen-seventy-six sought me out instead of you?” he asked.

  “Perhaps she was trying to get to me through you,” I suggested. The memory of seeing Eve’s clone thread her arm through Asa’s the first time made me want to rip trees from the ground and launch them at the couple. She had landed in the corn field that lay between our plantations, but instead of seeking me out – her target – she’d asked the first person she saw where she could find Asa.

  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.”

  “I’m only hurting you by being here!” I cried.

  “Then I welcome the pain, Eve, because it is the greatest pleasure of my life.”

  “You shouldn’t feel that way, Enoch.”

  “And yet I do. You are my huntress. You have staked my heart without piercing my flesh. My heart is yours. Please, stay for a time and when you need to leave, I will try my best to let you go.”

  “The longer I stay, the harder it will be to leave,” I whispered.

  Softly, his lips captured mine. A storm roiled in his eyes as his met mine and he deepened the kiss. He called me his huntress, but didn’t proclaim himself the hunter of my heart. And everyone who knew me knew that it belonged to him. It had been from the moment he smiled at me. When I disappeared in the stone room of his castle and he laughed, in awe of what I could do, it shook the foundation of lies from which my life had been built.