by Bond, Casey
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.”
He ignored my rambling. “Your blood tastes strange,” he remarked coolly. “And it does differ from your clones’ slightly. I thought you might need that information moving forward.”
“Why are you helping us? As far as I recall, we weren’t exactly friends the last two times we saw you.”
Asa turned his back to me and stared up at the night sky. “Have you ever hated someone so much that you would literally do anything to make sure they suffered at your hand?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation.
“War puts things into perspective for a man. Does that not make us soldiers in the same battle?” He glanced at me over his shoulder.
“It depends on whether we share a common enemy.”
“Do you know what you’re doing with the thing you tore from the clone’s hand?”
I quirked a brow. “Much more than you.”
Asa nodded. “I imagine so. I wouldn’t know the first thing about it.”
I wasn’t about to give him a crash course in circuitry and implantation. He would use any knowledge we fed him against us, and Asa was always hungry for more information. Time to change the subject.
“So, do you always creep around outside at night, or is this an intriguing new hobby?”
“Oh,” he grinned, “you never know where I might be lurking. Has Eve mentioned that I need her help? She still needs to play the part of my doting fiancée while the three of you are in this time.”
“Why?”
“One, because people would question where my fiancée went, and we don’t want them digging around for information. Two, because someone tried to kill my darling fiancée last week, and I want to know who it was and why.”
That was news to me. “What happened?”
“She was taking a stroll after dinner. Someone – she believed it was a man – had hidden themselves in the garden. He walked out from between two tall hedges and stabbed her in the stomach.”
My abs flinched, remembering the pain that tore through me when Abram ran me through.
“His face was concealed, so I’m not sure if he was human or vampire. I assume human, since a vampire could have just attacked and fed on her, not to mention that her blood didn’t send him into a frenzy.”
“He could’ve been targeting you by extension.”
“Perhaps. But I have no quarrel with anyone I know of.”
Well, that was hard to believe, given how charming he was. “Then maybe she did something to set him off, and you just didn’t know about it. It’s not like she was honest about what she was doing here. She’d been trying to bait you into biting her.” He cocked his head to the side and pondered the idea. Maybe the clone thought one of his direct sires’ bites would be the next best thing to his. “You must have enemies, Asa. The vampires you sire in this age aren’t like those from ours. I have a theory on that, which I’m not going to get into, but I’m just saying that if their lifespans are long, it could be a vamp from your past come to make you pay for something you did back then.”
His eyes sharpened. “How exactly do they differ?”
“For starters, they’re fast and deadly, but only if they feed. They constantly attack humans and drain them. Their skin is gray and withered, like they’re rotting from the inside out. It’s like they get sick from turning, and start to slowly decay. Blood is the only thing that holds off death and the only thing that can make them feel strong, so they feed as often as they can. Oh, and they can’t walk around in sunlight without being burned, so they only come out after sunset and must return indoors before dawn.”
Asa’s eyes flicked to the knife in my hand.
“What are your plans with the thing you extracted? Will you put it in Eve’s hand? It could make her doubly strong,” he offered, carefully watching my reaction.
“Or it could do nothing. Or it could kill her. There are a lot of possibilities, but I’m not willing to make her worse. If this won’t help, it could hurt her. And Eve deserves a chance to go home.”
“This home, this time you speak of, doesn’t seem like a place anyone should treasure as much as the two of you seem to.”
“It’s far from perfect because of the vampires, but it’s where we belong. It’s where we can get Eve some real help, and where we might be able to affect change. If we don’t stop the vampires in our time, there won’t be a future for mankind. Our city is going extinct, and it can’t be the only one. And guess what will happen to vamps, and to you, if your food source is eliminated?”
He pursed his lips together. “We can control the entirety of the vampire lines we sire. Not only the first generation of sires, but every generation,” he offered.
I raised a brow. “Really? That’s something I’m sure Victor and Kael didn’t know.” My hand tightened around the knife’s handle. “You think whomever tried to kill Eve’s clone will try again?”
“I do, and now he knows she’s different because she healed so quickly.”
“Do you know for sure it was a male?”
His brows furrowed. “No, I don’t. She described him as a male, but the only thing she said was that he wore a hood.”
“Could’ve been a female,” I offered. “Could’ve been a clone.”
�
�1777 hasn’t shown up yet. 1776 had been looking for her. Although, it may not have been a clone at all – or one of Eve’s, in any event. And if it was a clone, it could have been one of yours or Abram’s.”
This wasn’t good. I wished we had some clue, some place to look and go on the offensive instead of being on the defensive, fighting an unknown opponent. But weren’t we always doing that? The hooded man – or woman – could be Asa himself, or Enoch. It could have even been Terah who attacked Eve’s clone. She hated us all, and it wouldn’t take much to piss her off enough for her to stab one of us.
“It wasn’t me,” he added as if reading my thoughts. “You were just considering that the culprit might be me, correct?”
“Yes.”
“It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have used a knife.”
I shook my head. “Not if you wanted someone to believe it wasn’t you.”
His features turned to stone. “When I wanted her clone dead, I killed her. I wouldn’t stab her for sport and allow her to live.” He regained his composure. “Whomever stabbed the clone didn’t expect her to survive,” he explained calmly, making my skin crawl. “But now that she has…”
“He’ll try something else,” I finished for him. “Something worse.”
Asa nodded.
* * *
Eve
Someone was in my room.
Their steps were light, but the sound of squealing door hinges woke me. The last thing I remembered was Titus leaving to gather candles, but the tabletop beneath the window was empty so he hadn’t returned. Then I heard the door opening, and the person darted into the shadows in the corner of the room. I pretended to be asleep but shifted my position, rolling over to lay on my right side and easing a stake from my holster.
The floorboard groaned.
I heard the door open and close, the same upper hinge screaming, then footsteps leading away from my room. Throwing the covers back, I rushed to open the door, catching only the glimpse of a shadow on the wall as the person turned the corner. I ran to the hallway’s end, but the person was gone. There was no one on the steps and nowhere else they could’ve gone.
A louder set of footsteps came from the hall below, leading to the same staircase of which I was currently perched at the top. Leaning over the railing, Asa’s dark eyes met mine.
“What’s the matter?”
“Someone was in my room.”
He cursed and jogged up the steps, brushing past me. I ran after him as he opened my door and inhaled deeply. “Do you recognize the scent? Whoever it was stood behind the door.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Terah.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I assure you I’m not,” he vowed. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “What’s in it for you?” Men like Asa never did anything out of the goodness of their hearts, because that part of them, if it ever did, no longer existed.
Even though it was dark, his irises seemed to darken into coals. “Go back to sleep. Titus will return in a few minutes.”
Neither giving me the courtesy of an answer nor a chance to argue, Asa marched back the way he came in search of his sister. I didn’t like that he was being nice, and I especially didn’t like Terah sneaking into my room at night. At the very least, that girl would smother me with a pillow if she could. She hated me. She hated all of us.
I went back to my room and undressed, leaving on just my tech suit. Comfortable, I lay back down and waited for Titus. In less than ten minutes, he returned with a basket full of supplies, which he plopped down on the desk. “You’re awake.”
“I had a visitor.”
“Asa?”
“Terah.”
His brows popped up. “What did she want?”
“To creep into my room while I was sleeping,” I smarted. “I think she realized fairly early that I was awake, so she left rather quickly.”
“We need to figure this tech thing out and get the hell out of here,” he declared, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “And until we can, we stay together. You and me – got it?”
Nodding, I agreed, “Got it.” Except I wanted to see Enoch. I wanted to spend some time with him before we jumped again.
“So, you know that someone tried to kill your clone last week.”
“Asa mentioned it, but didn’t say how.” I sat up.
Titus brought a chair close. “Asa said she was walking in the garden out back after dinner last week, and someone rushed out of the tall hedges and stabbed her in the stomach.”
My eyes flicked to the place on his side where Abram had run him through. “Who was it?”
“No one knows. 1776 thought it was a man, but all she saw was that the person was hooded. She didn’t see who it was. They got away while she was hurt, assuming they’d delivered a death blow.”
“Her suit healed her.”
“Yep. And whomever stabbed her knows she can heal herself,” he warned.
“It could’ve been Terah,” I remarked. Why else would she be skulking around my room? I wished Enoch were here now. Although, he was protective of his sister. Would he defend me against her if it came to it?
Titus scrubbed his hands down his face. “I need to get to work figuring this out, and you need to rest. If the person who stabbed your clone decides to finish the job, you need to be strong enough to fight him – or her – off.”
“I hate it when you’re so damn logical,” I grumped.
Titus puffed out his chest. “Which is all the time. You know, Enoch was right. This thing between me and you never would’ve worked. You’re too stubborn and I’m too smart, and we’re both too pretty to be a real couple.”
“Sad, but true,” I deadpanned, flopping back onto my pillow, a wayward feather flying out of the seam.
Titus groaned. “That reminds me. I have a chicken coop to fix tomorrow.”
“I’ll help,” I volunteered.
“Fine,” he complained with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I guess I’ll let you.”
Titus moved to the desk and arranged what looked like thirty candles in an arch, placing the clone’s hand tech in the center. “I need to steal the lamp from the hall. I’ll be right back.”
I couldn’t relax until he was back inside. He sat the lamp down and locked the door, then scooted a wooden chest in front of it. “There. We’ll definitely hear someone trying to come in now.”
He sat at the desk, working on removing tiny screws with the sharp tip of a too-large knife. “Stop watching me and sleep,” he chastised. “Think of Enoch. He’ll be here soon.”
I closed my eyes and listened. I thought of Enoch and wished he would burst through the door and rush upstairs and into my room. I’d throw my arms around him and inhale the scent that was purely Enoch. What did he look like in this time? Asa still had long hair. Would Enoch? I wanted to run my fingers through it. I wanted to hear all that he’d done in the last almost-century.
I listened and thought for hours until I felt like I was in the ocean again, weightless but falling deeper into the water…
Chapter Seven
Abram
Victor once told me that he was a self-made man. That his diligence, work ethic, valor, and strength was what propelled him to the top. He, a simple member of the military, eventually became its commander. Those who used to give him orders now took orders from him. He described the battle of human versus vampire as an intricate game of strategy, one in which he declared himself the most proficient.
From what I’d learned, I was now in seventeen-seventy-seven, a little more than a year after America had declared its independence from Britain. Even though independence had been claimed, the war still raged heedlessly. Most of the fighting was happening in the north, but lesser battles were being waged throughout our fledgling nation. I’d been following a British regiment as they made their way north in an attempt to close in around the Continental Army. There were so many men milling abo
ut that when a few went missing, no one took notice. It made feeding convenient.
But there was another reason I stayed close. The men were scared, and frightened men babble. In the last several hours, I’d overheard a group of them speak of vampires, in particular about a company of them led by a captain named Asa. Asa, according to these men, never lost a battle. Asa was fast becoming a legend, a terrifying myth these men did not want to face.
If Asa and his company were tracking this regiment, I might quickly find their trail. And if we met on a battlefield, it could give me the chance I needed to end him. To these soldiers who have lived in fear of my target for so long, I could give them the victory they craved and prove Asa was not the mythical being they fantasized him to be. Part of me wondered if I would be remiss in helping the Redcoats win any battle against the men fighting for independence; but was my job not to oppose Asa at every turn? My mission was and still is to end him. Unlike my errant counterparts, I had not forgotten the vow I made to end my target.
I slipped into camp wearing the jacket of a man I just drained. Some of his blood soaked into the vibrant red fabric, but no human could detect it. The coat was worn at the elbows and along the edges, but it fit well enough. Three men sat around a fire, all of them young. They’d been told to keep watch, and as I trampled the hayfield making my way out of the wood line, one of them heard the swish of the tall grass, grabbed his musket, and stood. With his back to the fire, he faced the darkness. When his vision adjusted, he trained his gun on me.
“Who goes there?” he challenged.
“It seems I was lost, but now am found,” I joked, holding my hands out so he could see I was unarmed, and affecting a helpless posture.
The barrel of the gun slowly drooped. “You’re fortunate to have caught up to us without being eaten,” one of them joked.
