Page 32 of High Stakes

“Women are different,” I huffed. “If we learned nothing else from Kael, it’s that.” He often preached to us that women’s bodies were stronger than a man’s in some ways, and weaker in others. “How’d you wind up here?”

“I saw the castle in the distance after I first landed. I didn’t know it was Enoch’s; it was just the most visible structure around.” He kept manipulating the skin on the back of my hand as he talked. “I kept to the woods beyond the wall for a couple days, long enough to hear the soldiers talking about the pretty young woman they brought in, and how they hoped she wasn’t sick. When I heard that, I knew it was you. You always leave an impression.” He looked up at me and smirked, and then looked back down at my hand and fiddled around for another minute or two. “I can’t get it to reboot,” he growled.

I knew when Titus got angry, he couldn’t function. I tried to divert his attention. “How did you become an Asset?” I asked.

He blew out a frustrated breath, but I could tell his interest was piqued. “Mine is not a happy story.”

“I’m not sure those exist in our time.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. And I already know your backstory, so I guess it’s only fair to tell you mine.”

I ticked my head back, feeling oddly exposed. “How do you know mine?”

“Hacked your file,” he admitted with a wide grin.

“Asshole.”

He shrugged. “Had to know what motivated you. At first, I thought I might need to use it against you. Like maybe you were some cyborg or something. But when I saw what happened... Well, I figured you’re just like me.”

“Was your mother killed by a vampire?” I guessed.

“Mother, father, older brother, and baby sister. They were killed on their way to pick me up from school,” he revealed. There was a wistful gleam in his eye as he continued, “As a kid, all I dreamed about was playing football, being just like my dad, you know? Football practice was after school, which was normally a no-no, but it seemed safe enough because the vamps had only recently shown up and were keeping to the outskirts of town, for the most part. But they’d worked their way further into the city without us knowing.”

His voice became softer and I instinctively knew hearing this next part would be brutal. “I waited for them until sundown. They always came to watch me finish practicing. When they didn’t show, I knew something had happened. I jogged until I found our car along the road that led to the school, and that’s where I found them all dead. Those vamps tore my family apart and left me an orphan, for no better reason than that they were thirsty. I felt like revenge was a good enough reason to enter the military.”

“You enlisted?”

“Yep. Left school and football behind and signed up the next day. Moved up the ranks so fast, Victor pulled me from my unit and put me in the Asset program himself.” Titus stopped tinkering with my tech and gently held my hand. “Eve, I can’t find any visible damage to your tech. I’ve tried everything I know to do except one thing.”

Wary, I asked, “What’s that?” But before the last word left my lips, he bent my arm and banged it against the iron bar. Hard. I tried to pull away, alarm bells ringing in my head. “What the hell are you doing?” I screeched. He banged it one more time before I managed to tug my arm back through the bars. I looked down at my tech, realizing it wasn’t shattered... it was working again.

“How’d you know to do that?” I asked, releasing a tense laugh.

“It’s what I always do when computers won’t respond.” Unruffled, he held up his hand and wiggled it around. “Do you think they can read us? From our time, I mean. The tech is supposed to report our vitals back to them, but we’re so far back in time, I’m not sure if it still works.”

I snorted. “It wouldn’t surprise me. I wish you could send a message to Kael.”

Titus laughed out loud, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “My communicator is on. It doesn’t show any signal strength, but who cares? Let’s try it.” He typed a message into his forearm that contained every curse word I’d ever heard, and even some combinations of them I hadn’t. I hoped Kael received our message loud and clear.

He grinned, his eyes sparkling. “I have an idea.”

“Your ideas scare me.”

He laughed. “I just saved your ass with one of my ideas.”

“True.” I wiped the cold sweat forming on my brow with the sleeve of my dress, hoping he didn’t notice, and that the tech in my hand would stay on long enough to get me out of there. Maybe whatever illness I had was messing with it somehow.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I just thought of something that might be able to drag you out of the fourteenth century if your hand tech continues to malfunction. I mean, your plutonium is there, we just need to tap into it. If we’re linked to one another, if one of us jumps, both of us will accelerate.”

“You’re sure about that? Wouldn’t I need to jump, too?”

He winced. “I overheard Kael and Victor talking about linking us before we left, but they decided against it. Not because it won’t work, but because if one of us jumps before the others have time to strike, it would make travelling back in time a failed mission.”

“He said we had to have a certain velocity.”

Titus shook his head. “One of us does. Assuming the plutonium is active in your hand, it should, in effect, pull you with me through space and time if I jump.”

I tried to wrap my mind around this revelation. “So, if you jump, I’ll automatically be dragged back with you?”

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