High Noon - Casey Bond Page 0,68

and Asa were fighting. The ground felt like it was buckling, the wind bending to their blows. Time felt slower. Seconds became hours.

I blinked again.

A tear leaked from my eye. I don’t want to be a monster. I grabbed my stake, although I was unable to grasp it tightly. The slick wood slipped unsteadily in my hand.

Titus was gone. It was sick to think that I almost hoped Terah had taken him, because Kael getting his cruel hands on him was a far worse situation than anything she could have done. He’d been pulled home, and I was next. If Enoch didn’t reach us when we landed, we were screwed.

Maru is going to be so pissed.

I can’t be a monster. Not in this time. Not in the future.

If I don’t do this now, I won’t be able to. I won’t want to. I’ll want nothing but blood.

I raised the stake.

“Enoch!” Asa shouted, clambering up from where Enoch had tossed him several yards away. He reached out to me, like he could magically pull the stake out of my hand from afar. The wind kicked up all around us, encasing us in a dusty cloud. “Don’t do it, Eve!”

Enoch’s attention snapped to me. Through the dust, I gritted my teeth, aimed the stake at my heart, and… Enoch batted it out of my hand.

I was a liar. Another vampire had disarmed me.

Tears began and wouldn’t stop. “Kohana. Kohana, help,” I pleaded.

But he was in no shape to kill me. He groaned, cupping his side where fresh blood blossomed from his bandages. Asa stared at him intently, his nostrils flaring at the blood flowing freely from his wound. Kohana pushed at the ground with his feet, inching away from the Nephilim who’d scented his blood.

Enoch gathered me in his arms. “I don’t want to be a vampire,” I slurred.

“I know,” he tried to comfort, but his voice trembled like the troubled water from the spring.

“This isn’t the path I chose. Asa chose it for me.” I coughed. “I hate you, Asa.”

“When you look back on this day and laugh, I’ll accept your thanks then,” he spat.

“I’ll never thank you for this,” I seethed.

Asa laughed mirthlessly. “But you’ll have an eternity to consider it, providing you don’t do anything foolish like stake yourself in the meantime. All you’ve done is fret about going home, though you say it’s the only place you want to be. Go home, Eve. Go home and show them what a mistake they made in sending you after us, in torturing you, in thinking they were more powerful than you were. Make them regret every second.”

Every second. I heard my suit hiss and the circuits fired. I was lightning embodied, a storm bursting with rage and revenge, and I was headed straight for Verona. I could feel it in my stomach, the buzz of the pull. The vibration of it rattled through my bones. My tech blazed through my skin.

“I’m losing her!” Enoch shrieked. “Help me!” He patted my face. “Eve.”

Slowly, the buzzing in my ears faded and the world realigned. My eyes snapped open.

I stood up. Enoch watched me rise, still on his knees where I’d fallen.

Kohana stared at me as though I was his nightmare come true because I was, and now there was nothing he could do to stop me. Enoch wouldn’t let him.

The scene shifted. I was in the woods. Alone. Spinning in a slow circle, I whispered, “Where are Maru and Titus?” Terah emerged from behind the trunk of a tree, wearing a dress of wide, alternating purple and white stripes that stretched from her nape to dust the toes of her boots.

She lunged at me.

I went invisible.

She spun in a circle, eyes darting as she waited for me to emerge. I clasped my stake and was already swinging it when I reappeared in front of her.

“Eve, no!” someone screamed, but it was too late to stop me.

She sucked in a watery breath as her shoulders caved toward the wound like a pair of broken wings.

“Eve, what have you done?”

My eyes cleared as Terah fell to the dusty ground and a pair of strong hands wrapped around my upper arms. They squeezed tight. Shook me. A cloud of dust stung my eyes and I blinked the dust away. Enoch appeared through the haze.

“What did you do?”

“What?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.

Asa let out a wail. “She’s dead.”

My lips parted. I wasn’t in the woods anymore, I was outside the saloon. Kohana