Page 44 of High Noon

Chapter Ten

Eve

Getting dressedby myself wasn’t easy with a shoulder wound, but I kept reminding myself that the suit would eventually heal me. Push through the pain. Get it over with.

Abram had landed in the room next to this one and completely demolished it, according to Asa. I was glad this one was still intact. Time to myself was exactly what I needed. I clutched the clone’s suit to my chest and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and walking farther into the room. I flopped down on the simple bed, emitting a hiss from the jostled feather bedding. A small chest of drawers and a standing mirror with warbled glass in the corner completed the décor. Nothing hung on the walls. It was functional and neat. If I had the time, I’d be tempted to stretch out on the bed and sleep for days.

But time wasn’t a luxury I could afford, no matter when I landed.

I finally managed to remove my damaged suit and step into the reclaimed one, but it took a little more effort to tug the sleeve over my injured arm and zip it. Once I did, the clone’s suit whirred to life. The fiery pain ebbed and I let out a sigh, relaxing and enjoying the relief that came from being healed.

Laying down for a minute, I closed my eyes and took several deep, cleansing breaths, reveling in the feeling of being whole and pain free. When I figured Maru was pacing the floor, worrying way too much about me, I pushed myself up and walked out of the room to calm his nerves. He was waiting just outside, as promised. Just like I knew he would be.

“Did it work?” he asked, glancing at my shoulder.

I rolled it forward and back. There was no pain at all. No scar. No evidence that I’d been shot. “Good as new.”

Maru and I walked to the room next door. He whistled as he took in the new Abram-sized skylight. There were feathers all over where the pillow had exploded. The legs of the poster bed were smashed, and the bottom of the frame was plastered to the floor.

An uneasy feeling made me look in the hallway behind me. Until I knew where Terah was, I’d watch my back. And Maru’s.

“What’s wrong?” Maru asked.

“We have to be careful of Terah. I smashed holy water in her face in seventeen seventy-seven and she hasn’t forgiven me for it.”

His brows shot up. “What did she do to deserve that?”

“She tried to kill me.”

Maru hung his head. “Why does everyone feel the need to kill you? It makes being your trainer harder,” he said with a chuckle, smiling as he glanced up at me.

“I guess I just have that shining personality everyone wants to obliterate.”

The smile vanished from his face as he leaned in and whispered, “We need to talk. Me, you, and Titus. Alone.”

Maru, normally even-keeled, thrummed with a silent nervousness I wasn’t used to seeing from him. He balled his fists at his side, relaxed his hands and balled them again.

“What’s going on back home?”

He shook his head and put a finger over his lips. He would tell me, but not with the Nephilim around. How would I get a free moment from them?

Against all odds, Enoch caught me. He saved me from splattering into the earth, even though he said he was furious with the way I’d left him in seventeen-seventy-seven. He probably thought I would abruptly leave him again. The truth was, I hadn’t decided what to do yet and wasn’t ruling it out. One thought that had been rolling around in my head was that maybe we could subvert Kael’s plan to pull us home by finding a way to adjust his coordinates. That way when we jumped, we could land without him knowing.

I knew landing would be awful. If we landed inside the Compound, Enoch wouldn’t be able to catch us. He couldn’t save us. No one could. We needed a plan to save ourselves.

Titus jogged up the steps, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “Yeah, so… they’re going to clean up if you guys want to take a stroll and catch up with one another,” he offered with raised eyebrows.

Wordlessly, we followed him downstairs.

Enoch was in the process of righting an overturned table, but I noticed someone had already disposed of the corpse Titus staked. Asa came out of a back room with a broom. “If you make a mess, you should help clean up. It’s only fair,” he teased Titus, holding the handle out for him to take.

“Then you should find Terah and hand that thing to her. We’re taking a walk.”

Enoch blurred to me. “Where are you going?”

I was the reason there was fear and concern in his eyes, and I felt wretched about it. Now, it was time to make him see how sorry I was for leaving him.

“I’m not leaving, Enoch. Titus and I just need a few minutes with Maru to get him up to speed with all that’s happened, and so he can tell us what’s been going on in our time.”

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