Page 31 of High Seas

“And Abram faults you for it?”

“He hates it. To train, the three of us would take turns sparring with one another. At first, he beat me every time, but then I noticed that he has certain patterns and tells… like, he would glance ahead of his move, so if I followed his eyes and already started moving to block his blows, I could keep up. Then I began to win some of our matches. As the travel date got closer, I was winning all of them. He hated it when we were allowed to spar using our upgrades, but he always asked for them. He knew I’d win if he asked for permission to use them, but he wanted to beat me more than he hated losing.” She walked to my desk and let her fingers drift over the maps. “He thinks he’s been chosen by God to end the vampire race, and that I should die along with them.”

My muscles tensed. “He tried to kill you,” I gritted, feeling myself slip into the darkness. “In the castle, if I hadn’t heard you –”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t the first time. Abram’s never hidden his hatred of me. His own trainer couldn’t stop him when he went after me. Maru did a few times, though. He kicked Abram’s ass good, too, but Abram’s stubborn. He would just fume and wait for another opportunity – one he always seemed to find.”

* * *

Titus

I returned to the ship empty-handed, soaking wet and pissed off, only to find Enoch and Eve sitting together cozily on Enoch’s bed. Enoch stood abruptly when I entered the room. “You didn’t find him?”

I shook my head. “The storm’s bad, but I checked everywhere I could. I found one of my clones. Let me just say it’s a weird feeling… looking at yourself, but knowing it’s not really you. And he took one look at me and made fast tracks in the opposite direction.”

“Has Asa been to this island?” Eve asked.

“It’s been months as far as I know, but yes.”

“Where is Asa now?” Eve stood up and then quickly sat back down, holding the heel of her palm to her temple.

Something was still wrong. Not that her stubborn ass would admit it. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I just stood up too fast,” she laughed, trying to play it off. Her hand tech glowed, emitting a cool light across her forehead. Enoch shot me a worried glance.

She dropped her hand and slowly stood up. “Enoch, where is Asa?” she asked again.

Enoch shook his head. “He has a home on Nassau. That’s where I’d wager he is, but I can’t say for certain. He, too, has a ship.”

Eve stared at me. “What if Abram is there? If Terah and Enoch are here, and we landed here… maybe our tech somehow senses our targets and pulls us toward them. Kael told us we would land directly in front of them, which was a lie, but what if it wasn’t entirely untrue? Maybe we just land close to them.”

“Like an unperfected upgrade,” I answered. “It makes sense.”

“The whole land, strike, run, and jump thing would’ve been impossible given the way we landed and Kael said he went back in time. If he wasn’t lying he would’ve known it and shifted our mission so that we would land, recover, find our target, strategize a way to get close, and then try to strike.”

“And use our upgrades to hopefully make it home,” I added.

She nodded. “Kael values precision, but learns from his mistakes. He adapts.”

There it was. The haunted look she sometimes wore. Kael put it there. She was his greatest creation, but what had she given up to become it? As soon as he realized that male DNA rejected most of his upgrades, Kael left me and Abram alone. At one point, I envied her. Now, I felt damn bad for what she went through. I should’ve spoken up for her. I’d suspected that something was wrong a few times after she was upgraded. Some were easy for her. Others… clearly weren’t. She’d be absent from training for days.

Enoch’s features darkened as Eve spoke. As protective as Maru was, even he wasn’t as intense as Enoch when it came to Eve. I saw glimpses of it back in thirteen forty-eight, but now that he’d found her again, there was something darker and much more profound in his eyes when he looked at Eve.

Enoch lost his people, but had found Eve again. Something told me he wouldn’t let her go so easily this time. I was leery of the first vampires in the beginning, but now… Well, I was still leery of Terah. But Enoch? Despite him threatening to skewer me a few times, Enoch was alright.

“So… we’re going to Nassau?” I asked, rubbing my hands together to warm them.

“I’ll gather my crew,” Enoch answered, never taking his dark eyes off Eve.

“Right, so I’ll just give you two some space…” I backed out of the room and headed for a set of steps that led below decks.

It was dark but dry beneath the deck of the ship. I let my hands trail down the cool metal of the cannon, swung a few of the hammocks back and forth as I passed by, and peeked in a few sacks to find grain within. Some of the barrels were full of rum. Beyond the lingering stench of body odor and sweat, the smell of gunpowder and sea-wizened wood wafted through the cavernous space.

Enoch didn’t play around. He had piles of balls and shrapnel positioned beside and ready to be fired from each cannon. How often had he actually taken other ships? Was he a true pirate, always searching for ships and plunder he could steal? Whether he was aggressive in his pirating or not, he wouldn’t hesitate to defend his ship and men. I stepped through coils of rope and peeked in everything that wasn’t sealed.

A male chuckle erupted from the shadows deep within the bowels of the ship. I pulled out one of my stakes and crept into the darkness. A metal cage sat empty in front of me. To my right, the pirate Enoch called Thatch sat on a barrel, his shackled hands resting on his thighs. The heavy, dark chain between them rattled on the floor when he raised a hand and wiggled his fingers at me.

“You, my friend, are lost,” he said matter-of-factly. “Freedom is that way.” He pointed to the scant amount of daylight drifting down the steps that led down to him. “There’s nothing but death down here.”

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