Page 212 of Caelum

“And what’s that basis here?” Eve inquired, and as I stared at her, I saw the drooping of her eyelids and knew she was fighting to stay awake. Had the food made her sleepy? If this conversation wasn’t important, I’d have said it was time for us all to crash into bed, but we needed to figure out our next move. Frazer, Reed, and Stefan were being stubborn fucks, thinking we needed to keep her sheltered when that was evidently not going to work.

Shit had brought us to this moment in time, and shit would carry on happening until Eve had fulfilled her destiny.

That sounded heavy as fuck, but dammit, thiswasheavy. This was beyond a messed-up situation.

With Eve awake and involved in this conversation, we had more chance of steaming ahead toward a plan that wouldn’t see Reed, Frazer, and Stefan inadvertently killing our woman with kindness. She wouldn’t let them stick her in a protective bubble—and that they didn’t realize that made them total dumbasses.

“Some say the prophets weren’t human, weren’t sons of God or messengers, but creatures,” Eren continued after a brief moment of silence.

Her mouth dropped open at that. “You’re saying Jesus might have been a Vampire?” She winced. “Or, I mean, a Hell Hound or whatever?”

Eren’s lips twitched. “Sacrilegious, no?”

“Yes!” she snapped, and that was definitely her background leaping to the fore.

“It’s a theory. A working one. There are a lot of creature historians and theologians who discuss the theory and who make quite decent arguments.” He pointed to her arms. “What if that’s the language the prophets spoke?”

“It’s not Aramaic. I’d have recognized the symbols.”

I wasn’t the only one gaping at her, and she shrugged. “I helped teach the class at the compound.”

“You learned Aramaic in your cult?” Reed sputtered.

“It was a religious cult, Reed. What else would they spout if not religious doctrine?” Samuel pointed out absentmindedly, his focus elsewhere. Then, he paused in his search and frowned at her. “You’re right, though. Aramaic… there are three forms, and they’re all subcategorized.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I grumbled.

“Aramaic is so old that there’s the old version, the middle version, and the modern version,” Eve explained, apparently understanding where Samuel was going. “And then there are subsections, like East and West varieties.”

Samuel nodded. “What if Eve’s ink istongues,but an older version?”

“Doesn’t that make it harder to find? And doesn’t that mean we should also narrow down the search to creature historians and theologians?” Nestor countered.

“In a perfect world, if we weren’t evading Caelum, then yes,” Samuel said, his tone succinct. “This isn’t a perfect world. Instead, we have to rely on humans and hope that someone, somewhere, has come across a similar language.”

“That could take years to find,” I groaned, feeling exhausted already at the prospect of hunting down someone who might understand a language that was last used by Jesus.

“That’s time we don’t have,” Eren stated grimly.

“You don’t know that,” Reed retorted, evidently hoping that his plan to keep Eve in a nuclear bunker was on the cards again. Okay, mild exaggeration. But those three were a second away from making such a stupid suggestion. I felt it in my gut, and I just hoped they kept their mouths shut.

“I do,” Eren argued. “Look at her, Reed.”

We all did, and Eve didn’t even flinch at the surge of attention aimed her way. She looked more tired than before, and the light that pulsed on her body was blinking more than ever. It reminded me of a game I played on my phone, where you had to remember a pattern and follow that pattern blindly.

“What is it?” Eve slurred, and as we watched, she slumped in her seat as her eyes rolled back in her head. When she started seizing, we all froze for a second. I’d never been more grateful for a Vamp’s speed, though, because Samuel was there in the blink of an eye. His rapid movement actually stirred us all into jerking upright, but we were useless. Samuel wasn’t. As our woman began to convulse, he grabbed her and carefully laid her out on the ground, shoving the chairs out of the way so she could lie in a free and clear space. Her back arched, her body turned rigid, and the leaves began to glow and flash like they were strobe lights—then red spit began to froth at her mouth.

What the hell?

I watched Samuel check his watch. His hands were careful as he hauled his sweater over his head and, shaping it into a ball, pressed it behind her head. His hands hovered over her as though he wanted to touch her but knew he couldn’t.

Around her, keeping the same few feet between us as Samuel had maintained, we all dropped to our knees.

It could have been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, but I felt the passage of time like I never had before. I’d just wasted a day in a cave, and at some points, it had felt like the minute hand was ticking backward rather than forward, but now? It was on hyper speed. It scared the shit out of me because, once again, Eve was throwing us into the unknown.

Finally, she stopped convulsing and with it, her new ink stopped glowing.

As Samuel released a shaky breath loaded with relief, he checked his watch and whispered, “Eighty seconds. Shit, that was a long one.”

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