High Society (The High Stakes Saga #3)

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?”