High Society (The High Stakes Saga #3)

“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.