High Society (The High Stakes Saga #3)

“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 threat, 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.

* * *