Page 52 of High Stakes

Titus shook his head and gave a mirthless laugh. “Under the right circumstances, you might change your mind.”

“She’s already tried to stake me once, and yet she lives.”

Titus ticked his head back, giving me a proud grin, but put the big brother face on again and turned back to Enoch. “What if it had been me who tried to stake you?” he asked the Nephilim, who seemed to grow taller in an instant.

“Let’s just say that it would be a grave mistake for you to attempt such a foolish thing. And it would be even more foolish for you to try it from this point forward. I consider myself a fair and patient man, but my patience does have its limits.”

The tension between the three of us was thicker than honey, and not nearly as sweet.

“I have matters to attend, Milady,” Enoch addressed me. “I would like to invite the pair of you to dine with Terah and me privately this evening so that we may have a meaningful discussion without interruption or distraction.”

I glanced at Titus, who merely shrugged. It’s your decision, his eyes said.

“Okay. But can we dine outdoors?” I requested, thinking of my fainting spell the night before and the claustrophic daze I’d found myself in.

Enoch blinked twice, surprised by my appeal. “Of course. I’ll see that arrangements are made. Should I see you inside?”

“No,” I answered. “If it’s okay, I’d like to take a walk.”

“I’ll go with you,” Titus asserted, moving a step closer.

Enoch noticed the movement and narrowed his eyes. “Very well. I’ll leave you to enjoy your day. Mrs. Kerry will seek you out in time to freshen up. Dinner will be served at dusk.”

Titus and I waited until he walked back into the castle and disappeared behind the door. I released a pent-up breath. “What the hell are we doing?”

“We,” he emphasized, “aren’t doing anything. But you are walking a very dangerous road. You’re playing with fire, Eve.”

“Maybe you should unlink our tech,” I offered. “I don’t want to jeopardize your chances of getting back home.”

He shook his head. “No, because if I can jump in time to save your ass and drag you back home with me, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

As we started walking back through the pumpkin patch, Enoch’s words came trickling back. To the people in his care, he was the vine. But in our time, the vampires were the ones he nourished. The ones he fed on the blood of our people. The ones he kept alive through his bloodline. It would just take one stake to clip the vine and watch all his sired vampires wither and die.

“I had to lie to him about Abram for our sakes, not his,” he explained unapologetically. “Enoch doesn’t understand the tech, and that’s one advantage we have over him. We can play the magic card if we need to. Besides, if he thinks that killing Abram will hurt you, he won’t let it happen.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he asserted. “He won’t let anyone near you, Eve. He looks at you like he can’t believe you’re standing in front of him, like he’s waited for you his whole life. He looks at you like you’re already his.”

That was exactly how Enoch looked at me.

I didn’t understand how or why, but it didn’t make it less true. Maybe Enoch wouldn’t let his siblings tear me apart. Or maybe he was lying to us, too, manipulating us so he could learn more about what we were and what we were capable of. Maybe, like Victor, he was learning our weaknesses. He’d already noted many of our strengths.

The Enoch I knew from back home would kill me for no other reason than to send a message to Victor. Maybe in the end this Enoch would do the same, because they were the same person separated by nothing more than time. If I knew anything, it was that people were like icebergs. You only saw what they allowed you to see, but the dark places of a person’s soul were concealed beneath the surface. Inevitably, people tended to consist of more darkness than light.

Titus and I strolled through the garden, walking beside one another, a row apart.

“I tried to link just you and me instead of the three of us, but I couldn’t get it to work,” he admitted. “It was all or nothing. But, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if Abram didn’t make it home.” Titus side-stepped a lumpy pumpkin. “Assuming he’s still alive.”

“We don’t have that kind of good luck,” I teased. “He may be unstable, but Abram’s smart. He knows how to survive and hunt.”

Titus and I reached the end of the pumpkin patch and took a path toward the stone wall surrounding the castle, where a small bench sat beneath an intricate iron trellis. He plopped down on the bench and patted the weathered wooden planks beside him, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as I sat down next to him.

He brushed a golden strand of hair out of his eyes and nudged my arm. “I might not always be able to be at your side. Keep your stakes handy.”

“They are, and I’ll be careful,” I promised.

He snorted. “You just made a deal with the devil. ‘Careful’ is not the word I’d use to describe you.”

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