Page 41 of High Stakes

Terah and Enoch shared a confused glance. “That is the same question you posed earlier, is it not?” Enoch asked me.

“It is.”

“What is a vampire?” Terah questioned, testing the word, her head tilted.

Our table fell silent. Titus and I watched them as intently as they watched us. Finally, Titus let out a long breath. “I can’t believe this,” he finally said.

Neither could I.

The first vampires hadn’t started siring yet. They were living peacefully with the humans, in a strange symbiotic relationship formed by mutual knowledge and respect. What if we could make sure it stayed that way? Make sure they never sired?

Suddenly, I felt uncomfortably full. My stomach began to roil and heave. “Did you poison us?” I gasped, clinging to the table’s edge. Titus spat the food he was chewing onto his plate.

My corset was too constricting. The dress fabric was too thick. I needed cold, fresh air. I stood, stepping around the chair in my way as I whirled around, searching for an exit. The sounds bled together. Light-hearted chatter, chewing, goblets clinking, laughter, gulping. The plucked strings of musicians as they tuned their instruments.

Then there was the light from the flickering candles. It climbed up the stone walls, reaching but never overtaking. But the light wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was the shadows that fought to overtake the light. The shadows were winning the battle.

“Eve?” Someone said my name, but I couldn’t tell who it was.

Chair legs scraped across the floor.

I placed one foot in front of the other.

My body failed. My bones disintegrated. My muscles turned to liquid.

“Eve, what’s the matter?” Enoch said, louder.

I swayed, a cold sweat chilling my skin. The otherwise innocuous sounds blended into a macabre symphony only played in nightmares.

“Eve!” Titus screamed.

But he wasn’t the one who caught me before I hit the stone floor. It was Enoch. I smelled his herbal soap and felt his height as he carried me from the room, away from the noise and the shadows that clawed at me.

Chapter Seventeen

“Eve,” Enoch whispered. “A name almost as beautiful as she who bears it.”

He was sitting on the bed beside me. I could feel his weight pulling at the covers and the mattress sinking under his weight. Where was I? I felt like there was a heavy, lead blanket draped over my skin.

“It’s working,” Titus announced.

“What’s working?” I croaked.

“Your suit, Eve,” Titus revealed. “It’s warming you up.”

I blinked until my blurred vision cleared. I hadn’t worn the suit to dinner, so someone must have undressed me and then re-dressed me in it. Titus held my right hand and watched my tech wink on and off while Enoch held my left, dragging his thumb back and forth over the back.

“Your heart rate was crazy-low for a few minutes. I was struggling to find the pulse at your wrist.”

Enoch sat up straighter and his thumb stilled on my skin. “Are you saying Eve almost died?”

Titus looked over at him. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

I was in the year thirteen hundred, forty-eight. Images of boil-marked bodies flooded my mind. “Do I have the plague?” I asked, panicking. I tried to raise my head, but lacked the strength to sit up. My vision was still fuzzy and the world spun out of control when I wasn’t lying down.

“You don’t have the plague. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you don’t show any outward signs of infection,” Titus promised.

“You asked whether the food had been poisoned,” Enoch said softly. “I assure you it had not.”

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