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  High Society

  Casey L. Bond

  High Society

  Copyright © 2018 by Casey L. Bond. All rights reserved.

  First Edition.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior express permission of the author except as provided by USA Copyright Law. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of a copyrighted work is illegal. Copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by fines and federal imprisonment.

  This book is a work of fiction and does not represent any individual, living or dead. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Book cover designed by Melissa Stevens / The Illustrated Author Design Services.

  Book cover photography by Melissa Stevens/ The Illustrated Author Design Services.

  Cover Model/ Breanna Ellis

  Professionally Edited by The Girl with the Red Pen/ Stacy Sanford.

  Published in the United States of America.

  ISBN-13: 9781093899672

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Casey L. Bond

  Chapter One

  Maru

  Yarrow had typed, Hide well, Maru. It’s been announced that you are wanted for treason.

  Victor had declared me a traitor and stuck a target on my back. Fuming, I ran through alleyways and ducked between buildings, white-hot anger fueling my steps. I might as well have been declared a vampire. Now, I would be hunted by the same people with whom I occasionally hunted the monsters.

  Ditching my communicator in a garbage heap seemed fitting. Victor was a piece of trash, after all. I marveled that I’d seen Enoch face-to-face and survived the encounter, and the timing of Eve’s clones falling from the sky gave me a chance to run.

  I made my way into the city, toward the border as fast as I could. Tonight, I would read Eve’s letter and make a plan to move during the military shift change just before dawn. For now, I had to find a safe place – not only from the vamps, but from Victor and the military he would send to hunt me down.

  I settled on a small apartment on the first floor of a six-story building. The unit hadn’t been broken into or ransacked. The deadbolt still slid into the door facing easily and there were only two windows to cover in the front part of the house. I pulled the cord, tilting the blinds closed.

  Off the entryway was a small living room with matching furniture, its fabric puckered from years of use. Toy train cars were coupled together, sitting askew on the long coffee table as if derailed. There were stuffed animals in the corner – a bear and a unicorn, whose plush horn pointed at me as if warning its owner that I didn’t belong in the space. A small hallway led to a bathroom directly across from a bedroom. I pulled each door closed and kept moving further into the unit.

  The last room was the kitchen.

  On the counter was a candle, and in one of the stuffed-full drawers, I found a lighter. The wick caught the flame and illuminated the small room. I closed the blinds in the only window along the rear and then ran back to the bedroom. Tearing the covers off the bed, I quickly hung them over each window to completely black them out. Hopefully, the scant, flickering light would be hidden from any outside eyes.

  I withdrew Eve’s letter from my clothes. The envelope’s flaps were folded neatly, sealed with a glob of hardened red wax. My stomach dropped as I broke the seal, but when I removed the paper inside and saw her handwriting, my heart thundered. The letter was dated September 1, 1777.

  I covered my mouth as I read her words.

  My heart sank.

  My throat knotted.

  I blinked away the tears that filled my eyes and cursed. She doesn’t need tears, I chided myself. She needs help. She needs me.

  Once again, I was at the mercy of Yarrow. She was the only one I trusted besides Eve, and the only one who could gain access to what I needed.

  * * *

  Eve

  I closed my eyes as I fell, acrid smoke filling my lungs as I cut through the air. I refused to look at where I would land. It didn’t matter. It would hurt like hell, no matter if it was land, sea, or anything in between. Instead, I focused my thoughts on Enoch. I told myself that maybe if I thought about nothing but him, I’d land close by. If the theory that Kael programmed us to land close to our targets was correct, then maybe the feelings I harbored for Enoch would help me find him fast, in whatever century we landed. I just had to concentrate on them.

  My ears rang at the deafening sound of air being rent by the force of my body. My arms and legs succumbed to gravity, finding a surprising level of peacefulness.

  But my heart? It thundered like it belonged in the sky I fell from, and desperately wanted to stay.

  A series of explosions just below made my eyelids open. A second later came the impact, bone-crushing pain, and the uneasy realization that this landing was different from the previous two. I hit land; at least I thought I did. But this impact was harder because I was weaker. And this time, I wasn’t sure I would live through the jarring shock.

  My heart stuttered and then slowed. There were more booms, explosions that vibrated the earth under me and hurt every inch of my body that touched it. In the distance there was hard, but steady galloping. The snapping of leather. I had an unexplainable need to see the horse and its rider, but I couldn’t tilt my head.

  I inhaled and watched as plumes of smoke rose from all around me. I think I landed in hell. My eyelids closed.

  I exhaled as darkness swallowed me.

  * * *

  “Who is the woman?” Mr. Frost asks.

  “My mom,” I answer. My tongue feels too thick, my mouth too dry, and my eyes feel heavy. The lids droop until they shut.

  Mr. Frost slams his hand down on the table, startling me awake again.

  “What is your mother’s name?”

  I… I can’t remember. He’s not going to like that. I sit up, trying to wake myself so I’ll remember. My mom’s name is…

  “Her name?” he demands.

  “I can’t remember.” My new trainer Maru said there’s value in honesty, that it’s more precious than gold. The anger simmering in Mr. Frost’s eyes scares me. I’m not sure his currency is the same as Maru’s.

  “Where are you in this frame?” He pauses the grainy black and white video and waits for my answer.

  It’s a small store. That’s all I know. “Why does this even matter? It’s a store.”

  “Stores like this sell more than meets the eye. From the outside, they sell gasoline so that people can fuel their vehicles.”

  “Vehicles?” I ask. Everyone knows all the vehicles are dead.

  “Why were you there?” he asks, pressing play on his remote control again.

  A woman with dark hair leads a child into the store, holding her hand. They walk down the perimeter aisle and the woman opens a glass door and plucks a white jug from the shelf. She keeps hold of the girl and leads her to a desk where she lets go of the child to search her bag for money.

  I’m still not sure if I am the woman or
the girl. The image is too grainy.

  A shadow falls over the windows, followed by a moment of silence, when the female clerk and the woman look outside where the sunlight has disappeared.

  The little girl doesn’t notice that the light is gone. She tugs on her mother’s shirt as a man pushes the door open, a small bell attached to the door announcing his arrival.

  The woman pushes the girl behind her while the clerk reaches under the counter and ducks into a door behind her, quickly locking herself in and the woman and child out.

  The woman looks nervous. She shifts her weight back and forth, slowly but steadily pushing the girl farther from the man with whom they’ve been left.

  The newcomer looks sick, his pale hair long and greasy. The woman whispers something to the girl. I read her lips.

  “What did she say?” Kael asks.

  “She told the girl to run,” I answer. Just then, the girl dashes out a door on the opposite side of the building. On that side of the building, in the middle of the street, there is a sliver of blinding bright sunlight. The girl hides inside the warm light.

  The man watches the woman intently. As he stalks toward her she runs down an aisle, putting distance between them. But he’s fast. One minute he’s on the opposite side of the store from her, and the next he’s at the end of her aisle. Unaware of his new location, the woman sprints toward him, looking over her shoulder at the spot he’d stood in just a moment ago.

  She screams when his arms close around her, and I see the man has fangs. Though she fights him furiously, she can’t get away from his iron grip. He throws her into the glass doors she’d opened just minutes before, then he bites her neck. Inch by inch, she slides down the glass. The fight she has at the beginning of the attack is gone by the end.

  The man exits the store from the same door he used to enter it, not sparing a parting glance.

  The woman’s lips move as she angles her head toward the girl, still waiting in the shrinking sliver of sunlight. Though I register the movement, I can’t take my eyes off the girl in the sliver of gold.

  “Do you want to know what she said?” Mr. Frost asks.

  I shake my head. I don’t want to hear it. Imagining a hundred heartbreaking words, nothing is as bad as what he says were her actual ones.

  “She said, ‘Eve, stay in the light.’”

  My eyes well with tears. I open my mouth and shut it again, cobwebs of saliva stretching and then gumming in the corner of my lips. “The little girl was me?” I finally ask.

  “Of course she was. Don’t you remember?”

  I don’t. I don’t remember it at all. How could I have forgotten my own mother?

  “Don’t worry, Eve. I will help you regain your memory. And before long, you’ll never forget where you came from or why you are here.”

  The only problem is that my name isn’t Eve. I can’t remember what it is. It’s right there on the tip of my tongue… but it’s not Eve. The girl in that video is not me.

  * * *

  My tongue felt thick and swollen in the desert that was my mouth. Heavy eyes blinked to clear my vision, but saw nothing but a bright, blinding gray. Bright gray… with roots. No, not roots, but a broad circle of mostly bare tree limbs framing the sky. Stiff leaves blew across the sky as the wind tore the few that were left from their branches. A thin layer of fog stretched among the trunks and lay cold and wet over me. Sunlight was just beginning to evaporate the mist.

  Crows cawed from their perches, the rattle of their claws shifting across the branches as they stared down from above. One bird cried out to another. And another. My eyes tracked them.

  Caw.

  Caw. Caw.

  It was a huge murder of crows.

  Why are there so many?

  Some flew into the sky, circling until the invisible rings they flew in felt like nooses. Others dove to the ground, pecking at the dirt nearby.

  The explosions that greeted me upon my arrival had stopped and the earth was quiet, except for the crows that moved restlessly along the grass and branches, and the ones that circled and cawed and pecked.

  For a moment, I relaxed and breathed it all in. Nice and deep and slow.

  Until something else surfaced. Beneath all the other smells…the dry grass, the desiccated autumn leaves, and the smoke trails… lurked something familiar. I closed my eyes and attempted to place the scent, then tried unsuccessfully to move. The smell was somehow more unpleasant than my unfortunate condition.

  I need to get out of here. Now.

  Pain lanced and throbbed a steady rhythm through my head, and my hands and arms ached with pain that would not ebb. My back was numb. I couldn’t move my legs, but my fingertips flinched at my command.

  How long have I been out?

  A male groan cut through the crow song, sending a few of the fowls skittering skyward.

  I remembered that Titus had locked arms with me and Abram when we jumped together from the crow’s nest of Enoch’s ship. I tried to speak, but only a dry squeak came out. Clearing my throat and trying to will some saliva into my mouth, I finally managed a raspy, “Titus?” I could see a body lying to my left, and I hoped it was his. “R’you okay?” I slurred.

  Titus answered with another groan, this one quieter but more urgent than the last. His breathing was wild and ragged.

  “Calm down. We just landed,” I told him, still unable to move my neck or head. My fingers flinched toward him. My suit had activated and I could feel myself strengthening, but it wasn’t a fast process. In fact, it seemed to happen slower with each jump.

  “Can you see anything?” I asked.

  The Compound had a spacious lawn on one side, but if we’d landed there, we would be able to see the building. We’d see a lot of buildings. And here, the only thing in the clouded sky were branches and birds. If we were back home, and the theory of connection to our targets was right, then we could have landed near our targets and not necessarily close to the Compound itself.

  Or did linking arms change things? Because of our connection, did we get pulled to an area situated between the three targets? Was Abram lying on the other side of me? Was it him moaning and mumbling? I couldn’t tell who it was, just that the voice was deep.

  He mumbled something unintelligible. His tongue must feel strange, too.

  The sound of unfurling feathers came from beside me. A crow let out a loud caw before snapping its beak and tearing at something. Was it tearing at Titus? “He’s not food,” I scolded. “Shew!” I waved my fingers as emphatically as I could, trying to get rid of the fowl, when my hand flinched. My body was healing.

  The creature’s claws bit into the soil and trampled the grass as it hopped around. I froze. In the distance someone wailed, but the sobbing quickly turned into a frantic pant, becoming blood-curdling shrieks that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

  “Who’s there? Abram?” I yelled.

  Just as suddenly as it began, the screaming stopped.

  I could see the bird bouncing beside me in my peripheral vision, pecking at something. Another crow landed beside my leg and nipped at my suit, pinching the skin of my thigh with its sharp beak. “Ouch, damn it! I’m not your food.”

  Undeterred, the bird kept nipping. I continued to yell at it, trying to shoo it away with stiff fingers and hands before my arm decided to join the party. The bird stopped nipping when I gave it a sloppy slap.

  The groaning started again from my left.

  I strained, trying to raise my head. A fraction of an inch didn’t help much, but I kept trying. Straining more, I finally managed to tilt my head to the left where one of the figures lay. But it wasn’t Titus lying next to me. Nor was it Abram.

  A scream tore from my throat as I realized the crow was pecking at the eyes of a young boy who couldn’t have been more than thirteen. A discarded tricorn hat lay beside his head. The bird was perched on it, teetering with its movements as the crow tore at the young boy’s eyelids.

  My screaming did no
thing to stop the bird. I began to hyperventilate.

  The fowl victoriously plucked what was left of the boy’s eyeball from its socket and gobbled it down. A long, fibrous piece of tissue tore from the eye shell and dangled from the crow’s beak.

  I panted, peeling my head from the ground with difficulty and looking down past my feet. Titus and Abram, if they were here, might never be found. Surveying the space around me with great effort, my eyes roved over a sea of dead men.

  The familiar smell I’d noticed upon waking was that of death.

  It was all around me, as far as I could see in every direction.

  Chapter Two

  Eve

  “Here’s one of ours,” a male said, his voice as low as the lingering smoke. I turned my head to see who was coming.

  Two young men were wading through the carnage, moving bodies aside and placing others into a rough, wooden cart. One had dark hair, one had light. For a moment, I thought it was Titus and Abram searching for me. But their voices didn’t match and once they turned toward me, even though they were backlit by the sun, I could see it wasn’t really them.

  “You’ve found none alive?” the second man asked. His hair was red, shining brightly in the sun as he went about his task.

  “Not yet,” the dark-haired boy replied, grabbing the arm of a fallen man and dragging him out of the way of the wheels. The bright haired man pushed it along, pausing to avoid the dead. They left the men wearing red coats on the ground and plucked up anyone wearing blue ones, their arms dangling lifelessly from the cart.