by Casey Bond
He tossed his head back and laughed, his tawny hair glossy in the moonlight. “You can’t kill me.”
I pushed him backward into the stream where Titus caught and pinned him by the throat in the light trickle of water. The vamp thrashed in the flow, craning his head to get a breath. “Who sired you?” I asked again, walking leisurely into the water and putting my stake over his heart.
“We can do this the hard way or the easy way, dude, but you’re not making it past us alive,” Titus warned. He held the vampire tight. They were stronger than some of the vamps we’d staked in the arena, but not nearly as strong as the Nephilim.
Titus forced him under the water, letting him back up several seconds later. He repeated this until the man was worn out. “Tell us who sired you,” he gritted in the vampire’s face. I’d only seen Titus this aggravated a few times before and knew what would likely follow. He was about to give him the ass-kicking of a lifetime and then stake him for fun.
“I don’t know his name!” the young vampire cried out. “He talked like you, but wore… I don’t know his name. I’m sorry. Please, let me up.”
Titus looked over his shoulder at me. My stake was ready to hit its mark. At his nod, I plunged it in fast and we watched the life ebb from the vampire’s body. Titus pulled my stake from his body and washed it off. The vampire’s body bobbed along with the water’s flow.
My head began to throb, but I didn’t tell Titus. I hoped the adrenaline rushing through him would keep him from noticing.
Before we stepped out of the water, Enoch and Asa appeared. They looked around at the vamp carnage with brows raised, surprise splashed over their faces. And maybe, a pinch of respect swirled in Asa’s eyes.
Enoch was covered in blood, from the fabric tied at his neck, to his boots. “What happened to you? Did you find any?”
“We found five.”
“Abram sired them,” Titus told them.
“We know, which is why we left two alive, and my brother here,” Asa said as endearingly as he could, “told them to seek and kill their master.”
I tried to laugh. “At the very least, it’ll keep Abram busy for a time,” Enoch replied with a shrug. He made his way to me. “I want you to go back to Asa’s and wait for me there.”
“Why? Where are you going? What happened to you? You’re soaked in blood.”
“It’s not mine,” he said coolly.
I never thought it was, but couldn’t imagine the damage he would’ve had to inflict to coat his entire person in the blood of another.
“In addition to burning my home, it appears that they killed everyone who resided and worked on my land,” he replied, swallowing thickly. He took both my hands in his, gripping them tightly. I could see the sadness welling in his green eyes. His grip was sticky with blood.
“I want to help you this time.” Not only should he not have to bury his loved ones for the second time by himself, this was so cruelly reminiscent of the slaughter at his manor that I wondered if Abram somehow knew what Victor and Kael had planned from the start.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes,” I squeezed his hands, “I do.”
There was no other way to show him how much I cared, or how sorry I was that Victor used my face to commit such atrocities. No amount of apologizing would ever make me feel better about all the innocent people who died to end a fight for which they weren’t even responsible.
I squeezed his sticky hands and pulled him toward his house.
Asa left to make sure his home and those who lived and worked there were safe. Some repairs needed to be made immediately, and that would require supplies and labor. He needed to prioritize what was urgent and put off what wasn’t until later. Titus offered to go with him, but Asa somewhat politely declined.
I might have been imagining things, but it seemed like seeing what Titus and I were capable of shook him a little.
Enoch led me and Titus to his home, where we found the bodies of those who had been slain. Eight adults; five men and three women. “Where are the children?” Enoch worried aloud.
“How many kids were here?” Titus rasped. My heart ached for him. He’d lost siblings to vampires.
“Three. Two girls and a boy.”
“I’ll look for them,” Titus declared, taking off toward the manor. There wasn’t much left of it. Only a charred, empty shell of brick and mortar remained. I worried he wouldn’t find them, and worried he would.
Enoch was frozen beside me, staring at the ruins of his home. The bodies of people he loved and respected lay just feet away. I wasn’t sure what to do or how to comfort him, or if I should speak or reach out for him at all. The truth was that I just left him in seventeen-seventeen, but sixty years had passed for him. He had changed between thirteen-forty-eight and when I found him on Brutulo. He would have changed again from then until now.
So, I waited and let him stand in silence and stare at what was lost. I imagined him doing the same in front of his castle-like manor house in thirteen-forty-eight, staring at the vacant eyes of hundreds of bodies, asking why he hadn’t been able to protect them all. In that time, it wouldn’t have been the blood of Asa’s sires soaking him. It would’ve been the blood of my clones.
If Victor had seen Enoch and known him in that time, maybe he wouldn’t have sent the army. I wondered if our arrival made our future bleaker, instead of brighter. That what we did to the Nephilim – what we were still doing – was setting us up for a fall we wouldn’t recover from.
Enoch cleared his throat, though his voice was still raspy when he finally spoke. "Death shouldn't bother me like it does. I should be used to it by now. I've seen enough of it in my lifetime that my heart should be calloused and impenetrable when I look upon the dead. We aren't human. We have outlived many that we've loved. But for some reason, death is something that cuts to the very core of me. I'm not sure it will ever be less heartbreaking to lose someone I care about. Sometimes, I think I’m actually jealous of the dead. They will taste a peace and eternity I may never savor."
I pressed my eyes closed, trying to summon words to comfort him, but there were no words that could take away his pain; not the pain he felt today, and not the pain that echoed from the past. His life would always be filled with the deaths of those he loved. For some unfathomable reason, he and his siblings survived the flood that killed the rest of their kind, and nothing has been able to kill them since. The reality was that they may never die. They may be immortal. And he was right, every season of his life would be full of death, both the natural passing of mortals and the lives taken in hate.
Finally, I spoke. "I'm so sorry, Enoch." The words felt hollow. Not because they weren’t heartfelt, but because there was nothing anyone could say right now that would make things better or take away his pain. I had seen the mourning of some who lived in the Compound, and I'd told them the same thing, that I was sorry. It wasn't a lie. I was sorry they'd lost someone. I knew intimately how that felt, but didn't want to say it and diminish their feelings in any way. Heartache like this cut hot and fast, and though time would take away the sting, the heart would never be the same as it was before. There would be a scar, a reminder of the moment in time when life profoundly changed for them.
"There are shovels in the garden sheds," he said.
"I'll get them." I went to walk past him and he caught my elbow, spinning me around to face him. Wordlessly, he buried his face in my neck and cried, sobs wracking his body. Tears fell from my eyes, soaking his coat. "This isn't your fault," I told him. Because it wasn't. None of this was. It was mine. We should never have agreed to travel.
When we jumped the first time and saw the three siblings were different, we should have jumped home. If that didn't work, we should've kept jumping until we made it there. We shouldn't have upset whatever peace they had. Instead, we messed everything up and Enoch was paying the price. His people – innocent people – were being killed because we chose the wrong path. How were we any different
from the bloodthirsty vampires in our time who preyed on the populace?
The sound of footsteps made me raise my head. Titus lingered near the house with three children hovering around him. I looked up at Enoch. "He found them. They are alive."
"Tell him to keep them away until we finish."
My tears didn’t stop as I walked to Titus and whispered to him. He guided the kids to the well house, amazingly still intact in the back yard. The two girls, twins, looked no older than five. Their dresses were covered in soot and dirt. Their little feet were filthy and their auburn hair was knotted and snarled, the hair having slipped out of their braids long ago. They asked for their parents.
When Titus told them they needed to get cleaned up, the little boy spoke up. "They’re dead. I saw the monsters bite them and then they fell down." He began to cry. "My Paw's dead, too. Now nobody's gonna look after me." Titus pulled them all into his arms, telling them everything was going to be alright.
I plucked two shovels from the nearest shed and ran back to Enoch. He was still crying silently, but not for himself.
"What will happen to them?" I asked in a trembling voice.
"For now, we'll take them to Asa's. The girls have an aunt in a nearby town, but the boy is right. He has no one left. His grandparents are dead, his uncle died in the war, his mother died in childbirth, and his father lies here dead. But we will take care of him. I'll make sure he has all he needs."
What he needed was his father back, alive and unhurt. I pushed the shovel head into the ground and began to dig. The soil was dark and rich and easy to cut through. I wanted it to be rocky and as brittle as I felt, to make the process of burying those whose deaths I'd helped cause more punishing. But the earth gave way easily, adding to the guilt pressing down on my shoulders. I needed to get Titus and get out of here. We had to jump. Enoch would be better off without me anywhere near him.
We moved the first body into the grave I had dug, and then Enoch began digging another while I covered the boy’s father with the rich soil, one shovel full at a time.
“Years ago, after the clone army appeared and after the last of your doubles died by Asa’s hands, we looked for survivors and found none. The fact that these three children managed to hide and survive is truly a blessing,” he finally said, his voice breaking.
How could he see good in any of this?
“And then, it took the three of us days to bury all of my people. We left your variations to rot until the innocent were laid to rest, but every time I had to step over one of them, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was you. If you were among them.”
“You must have hated me.”
“Afterward, yes, but not in that moment. In the days that followed the slaughter, I kept hoping you weren’t dead and hoping I hadn’t inadvertently killed you. I kept hoping you’d made it home safely.”
I shook my head. “I don’t see how you could have thought that. I couldn’t have.”
“You don’t know that,” he replied. “Love doesn’t have to make sense. It just is. I couldn’t switch it off, even after…” He stopped digging for a moment, folding his hands over the shovel’s handle. The sky lightened behind him, birds chirping in the canopy above like they had no idea the whole world wasn’t completely messed up.
“And then, we had to do something with your clones. There were thousands of you. I stopped counting after nine hundred. Asa refused to help bury a single one of you, and Terah followed his lead. He suggested making large pyres out of the heaps of your bodies. Numbly, I helped them make mounds of your dead, lifeless corpses. Once we had ten enormous piles around the yard, Asa lit them on fire. I couldn’t bring myself to stay and watch you burn. After that, I took off on foot to Asa’s home and found that someone had slain his people, too.”
My mouth gaped open. “I had no idea.”
“I know,” he said softly. “I didn’t tell you because I knew that the truth of what had happened broke your heart, and I wanted to spare you the pain of knowing such a thing.”
“Did Terah have a home of her own? Did they attack it?”
He shook his head. “In that time, she was unmarried. It wasn’t lawful for her to own property, so she lived in my manor instead.”
No wonder Asa harbored such hatred for us. He’d told me once that he should’ve killed me when he had the chance. Maybe if he had, this wouldn’t have happened. If they had removed the three of us, lives would have been saved, even as ours were lost.
Enoch resumed digging and I continued covering the body of the man whose son was now orphaned.
Tears never stopped falling from my eyes, but Enoch’s dried up. I could almost hear and see the hatred for Abram filling him up. But Abram wasn’t the only one he should hate.
Chapter Eleven
Titus
After the dead were buried and the sun was up, we escorted the kids to Asa’s. He was surprised to learn that there were survivors. The boy had seen the adults killed, though I wasn’t sure where he was when it happened. He wouldn’t talk about it anymore, but I felt sorry for the little guy. He was six. He shouldn’t have had to witness that.
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.
