Eve of Man (The Harvest Book 2) (22 page)

“There wasn’t time and it didn’t seem all that
important.” Ed interjected before Jeremy could spill his guts. Some things were
better left unsaid until the timing was right or maybe not said at all.

“But you want to marry her, right?” Kyle demanded.

Jeremy turned red and fumbled for an answer. Marriage
didn’t hold much, if any, importance in their new world, and never crossed
Jeremy’s mind, but he couldn’t confess this to Kyle. Kyle hadn’t suffered their
fate. He wasn’t part of their common thread, a survivor of shared horrific
events. Without first-hand experience, he wouldn’t understand.  

Austin came to the rescue before Jeremy decided to spill
his guts. “Of course he does, but Grace refused to get married while she was
pregnant. Something about being fat and the wedding dress not fitting.” A
complete fabrication, but Austin didn’t care. If Kyle knew the whole truth he
wouldn’t care so much either.

“Can I see her?” Kyle asked, afraid to believe he’d
found her without visual proof.

“Sure. I’ll take you to her,” Ed offered, pushing back
and getting up from the table. “Do you want to come with?” he asked Jenny. “In
case the shock is a bit much for her?”

Jenny nodded and stood up.

“You better go too Jeremy,” Austin suggested and
Jeremy agreed, casting a nervous glance in Kyle’s direction.

Soon after their departure, the others cleared out of
the dining room leaving Austin to think in peace, but all he found was his
tormented thoughts. Visions of Roxanne and Eve meshed together, separated and
swirled around his mind.  He forced those images away, and thought about Kyle’s
journey. If he was able to cross the Bering Strait to come here, couldn’t they
cross it to leave? What would that take? Would the risk justify the result? The
Adita wouldn’t stop until they had world domination. If they escaped to Russia
or Germany, would they then die once the Svan were sent out to harvest more
humans?

Too many questions without answers remained, and Austin
couldn’t help thinking about the one person who knew the answers. He glanced at
his watch. She’d been gone for a week. An unsettling thought that she might not
come back crossed his mind and put a knot in his stomach. He rubbed his head.
She would come back. She had to come back.

Austin dropped his hands. What was he doing to himself?
She wasn’t human. She didn’t have feelings like a human. He looked at the palm
of his hand, no mark, no scar was visible. Was he human anymore? Yes, of course
he was. He felt emotions, he hurt, and he loved. Eve wasn’t capable of love.
Love? Austin stood up, almost knocking over his chair in the process. Was he so
desperate to have Roxanne back he would think himself in love with Eve? How
could he love Eve? That would be foolish. Ah, but you are a fool, for maybe you
already love her and have since you were nine years old.

Austin leaned on the table gripping the edge so hard
he felt it begin to crack within his grasp. The picture Kyle had given to
Charlie caught his eye. He reached across the table and picked it up.  He
looked at the picture, not seeing the images for being blinded by his thoughts.
He didn’t see the tall petite woman standing with her arm draped around Grace’s
shoulder. He didn’t see the woman until he focused and then he saw her. First
her long blonde hair, braided and hanging over one shoulder, caught his eye. Styled
similar to how he remembered his mom wearing her hair. She wore hers like...she
looked like....just like his mother.

He set the picture down and pulled out his wallet.
From behind his driver’s license he slipped out a photo. It was old and frayed
around the edges. Although his hands were steady, his heart thumped hard and
fast against his rib cage. He picked up Kyle’s picture and compared the two.
The similarities were undeniable, removing any doubt that the woman in Kyle’s
photo was the same one in his. The same woman who had abandoned him when he was
five, leaving him behind with an alcoholic father, leaving him to fend for
himself, leaving and never coming back.

Bitter pills were the hardest to swallow and Austin
had taken his fair share, but he never thought he’d be faced with this biting
rancid truth. As a child he’d pictured her living a miserable lonely life, or
dead, and not coming back for him because she was unable. But she’d gone on to
start another family, never returning for the one she’d left behind. He’d been replaced
and forgotten. Austin’s hand itched to crush the picture, but he laid the photo
gently down on the table. He would ask Kyle who she was before jumping to
conclusions. He needed that validation first, because maybe, yes maybe, he was
wrong. The odds were not good; in fact the odds were the greatest odds in favor
of him being dead on right.

***

The lighting in Grace’s room was dim, but they could
see she was asleep. Kyle looked at the girl lying on the bed. Tears welled up
in his eyes. He walked over to the bed and gazed upon his sister’s sweet face.
For so long he’d given up hope, thinking she had to be dead. He touched her
hair, her face. She was real.
She’s real
, he thought, trying to assure
himself he wasn’t hallucinating or dreaming.

“Grace,” he said.

Grace stirred and murmured in her sleep.

“Grace wake up. It’s Kyle.”

 Grace’s head turned back and forth fitfully, perhaps hearing
Kyle’s voice in her dream. Her eyes opened. For a few seconds she lay there not
moving, waiting for sleep to subside, waiting for her dreams to subside. She
frowned remembering her dream and turned her head.

“Hey kiddo.”

Grace rubbed her eyes. “Kyle?”

“In the flesh.” He smiled.

“Kyle?”

“Yeah it’s me sis.”

“Oh my... How’d you get here? When?” Grace frowned.
“Am I dead?”

Kyle laughed and leaned down giving her a big hug.
“Not at all. I arrived by pick-up truck, well by foot, then truck. It’s a long
story. Anyway, what about you? Gonna be a mommy I hear and see.” He pointed to
her stomach.

Grace looked away from Kyle, embarrassed. Not for
being pregnant, but for how it had happened. “Did they tell you?” Her voice
wavered.

“Tell me what?” Kyle didn’t like the sound in her
voice. If that kid hurt Grace he wouldn’t live to see the end of the day. “Did
that boy hurt you?” Kyle demanded.

 Grace turned back to look at her brother. “What boy?
You mean Jeremy?”

“Yes Jeremy,” he spat out the name, already planning
the various ways he would torture him.

“He didn’t hurt me. It wasn’t his fault I got
pregnant. I wanted to. I needed to.”

“What? Why? I mean why would you need to get pregnant?
Help me out here sis.”

Grace sighed. Where was she supposed to start? When
General Roth’s men rescued her and their mother? When they wouldn’t let her
bury their mother? When Roth lost it and turned their safe haven into a den of
nightmares? The entire past year existed of bad things, bad news, and bad all
around. Except for Captain Reynolds killing Roth and bringing them all to the
bunker, but a silver lining around a pile of shit didn’t change the pile from
being shit. This brought her back to Kyle’s question and still not knowing
where or how to start.

   “It’s probably not a good idea for Grace to relive
all that right now,” Zack said from the doorway. No one noticed Zack coming in,
but his disheveled appearance was a sight to behold. “Zack Londergan, bunker
physician of sorts, nice to meet ya.” He held out his hand to Kyle.

Kyle shook his hand. “Maybe you can tell me what the
hell’s going on.”

“Be glad to, but not right now.” Zack replied, holding
his ground. Kyle was under a lot of stress and needed to process having found
his sister, before he heard the circumstances of that which brought her to the
bunker.

Kyle turned back to Grace. “Where’s mom?”

Grace looked broken. “She died. The cancer was too
much. She was too weak and without treatment...”

“When?”

“About a month after the Sundogs arrived. She didn’t
suffer. She died in her sleep,” Grace said, hoping to ease his pain. “I was
with her. She didn’t die alone.” Grace would never tell him about the deplorable
treatment she’d received, his wounds were deep enough without that knowledge. 

While Kyle was wondering why life must always turn out
bitter sweet, Austin sat in the dark of his suite wondering what to do about
the picture. When he’d first seen Kyle something familiar had struck him,
recognition maybe, but he’d brushed the feeling away. The chance that they were
related, brothers even, was irrefutable. Although, Austin reasoned, Kyle could
be a stepchild and no relation at all. This was plausible, but a theory Austin
disregarded immediately. He knew they were brothers and the blood ties ran
deep.

Austin felt the air around him stir and the hair on
his arms popped. Eve had returned. “You came back,” he said, trying to sound
casual, trying to ignore the way he felt when she was near.

“Why do you hide your feelings from me?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Human nature I guess,” he replied and
wondered if that might sound stupid to her. 

Eve touched his arm. “I would like to take you
somewhere. A place I used to go before everything changed.”

Austin nodded and thought to ask if they were going far,
but distance wasn’t a relevant measure where Eve was concerned.

She reached out and took Austin’s hand, pulling him
from the bed.  “We’ll only be away for the night.”  

The air around them expanded and contracted like a giant
breathing entity. Eve held Austin close to her as she whisked them through
space. Moments later Austin found himself standing in the middle of an imposing
bedroom. The walls were made of hefty stones, the windows stood floor to
ceiling, and the furniture was built for a man of immense stature. An immense
canopy bed sat in the center of the room and two fireplaces took up entire walls
on opposite sides of the room. Several tall candle pillars provided globes of
dancing light.

“Where are we?” Austin asked, watching his breath mist
in front of him.

“Eastern Siberia.” 

Austin walked to the window, pulling aside the heavy
drapery, he peered out over a vast wilderness of mountain peaks and valleys
covered in snow and ice. “How high up?”

“Eight thousand feet.”

“Is that all?” he joked.

“I don’t understand.”

“Nothing. I was being... nothing.” He turned back to
her. “I thought you didn’t want me to go to Russia with you?”

“I am going to another place not far from here and I
will go alone.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

Eve considered his question, but had no answer that
would satisfy him, other than the truth. “Because I wanted to be alone with you.”
With that she raised her hands, palms outward, and gave a gentle push. Soon
both fireplaces were crackling with fire, spreading heat into the frigid room.

“How do you do that?”

“Transfer of energy.”

“Where does the energy come from?”

“Everywhere.” Eve walked over to Austin. “We don’t
have much time. Are these the questions you wish to ask?”

Austin shook his head. He didn’t want to ask questions
or talk, he only wanted to kiss her. Eve stepped into his arms. Their lips met,
tender at first and then more demanding. Austin picked her up and carried her
to the bed. Inside, hidden behind the black velvet curtains, their bodies
entwined, becoming one with each other.

For the first time in her long existence Eve
experienced the ecstasy of physical contact. She’d never desired to mate with a
human, not even as Roxanne. During her years as Roxanne, she’d become her and
had relied upon her memories and desires in order to behave in a manner
appealing to Austin. She’d performed an act, one she’d been mentally removed
from, one she treated as a necessary means to an end. However, tonight she was
being Eve, mentally, physically and without a hidden agenda. And she found the
experience to be unlike anything she’d ever felt or imagined. The satisfaction
was not unlike her first kill.

These were not the words Austin would have used to describe
what took place between them. The only word going through his mind was more. He
wanted more of her. And later, as he lay on his back, bathed in sweat, he
wasn’t thinking of anything other than his desire to have her. He didn’t notice
his heart rate being normal; the beats per minute being no indication of the
efforts expelled over the past hour. That his heart rate was normal and that
the cause was related to his mutated genes, were not in his thoughts. Eve’s
hand touched his, sending a spark through his body. He pulled her on top of
him, losing himself again.

They spent the better part of the night with few words
passing between them. In the early morning hours, before dawn’s first light,
Eve lay in Austin’s arms listening to him breathe. She’d observed the human
mating ritual many times and always thought the process complex and strange.
The efforts taken by the male to entice the female were often covert and she
didn’t wonder why they seldom came away with the fittest female, if any at all.
The Svan mated in the year of the ninth moon. The strongest female chose the
strongest male to produce the fittest of the species. Humans applied no such
consideration into selecting a mate. Their process was driven by visual
attraction first and foremost. For the males, especially the young, the need to
satisfy the desire outweighed the need for procreation. Although after tonight
Eve felt she better understood this drive, she still couldn’t grasp their
unwillingness to strengthen their species, as the Adita did, as other
civilizations did.    

Austin pulled the heavy blanket up to his waist. He
knew Eve didn’t feel the cold air, but he was still human enough that his body
temperature fluctuated.

“What is this place?” he asked.

“A fortress, or castle if you like, built by my
great-great-grandfather Sattya. It has been here in these mountains for
centuries, but no human has ever been here,” she paused, “until now.”

“Should I be honored?”

“Be whatever you like,” Eve replied.

Austin smiled over the fact his sarcasm fell on deaf
ears. He never thought pure honesty would unnerve him, but delivered by Eve had
an unsettling effect on him. Many things about Eve were unsettling, but not all
were negative.  

“Would you like to hear more about the Adita and the
harvest?”

After several seconds Austin replied, “Yes.”

“You will not like what you hear about the harvest.”

“I know.”

Eve spread the drapery aside to allow in the warmth of
the fireplace and rolled over on her back, keeping a hand on Austin’s arm.
Touching him gave her a sense of being something different, something she
imagined being human might feel like. Feeling at peace was not a sensation Eve
recognized, all she knew was the hunger inside was satisfied for the moment.

“The history of the Adita is known only by the Adita. The
secrets I share go far beyond those of the Adita alone. By giving you this
knowledge I give Agra more reasons to kill you. Are you sure you wish to know?”

Austin nodded. “I think Agra was going to kill me
anyway, but I don’t want to put you in danger.”

“It doesn’t matter now. I have already broken many
rules and fear I’ve outworn my welcome with my father,” she replied. “But let
me begin, before the day appears and we have to return.”

I don’t want to leave
,
was his first thought, which he pushed aside, feeling disgusted with himself
for thinking such a gutless thing. Of course they would go back. Hiding from
the Adita wasn’t an option and he wouldn’t abandon his friends.

“We will return to your people,” Eve assured him and
then began her story. As she spoke Austin forgot about the bunker and his guilt.

“The Adita’s arrival on this planet took place in the
middle of their extensive history. For you to understand the middle, I must
start at a point earlier. We don’t have time to go back to the beginning as the
history in-between is vast and made up of events too numerous to relay in the
few hours we have. Thus I will tell you those that are most important. The
first thing you need to understand is the structure of the universes. There are
seven.” She drew seven perfect circles in the air that radiated light from the
energy force within her. “These seven are separated and connected by dark
matter.” She indicated the black space surrounding the seven circles. “Earth is
here, in the third.” She pointed to a circle in the middle. “The universes are
commanded by a group of Elders. They control everything within this realm. The
suns, the moons, the winds, life. For countless years they were in agreement
and wars were non-existent. The Adita lived and commanded the second and third universes.
They lived in the second on a planet much like Earth, but smaller in size.”

“Why did they leave?”

“A vicious battle took place with the Mahat, a species
from the fifth universe who make the Svan look less dangerous than your domestic
cats. The Mahat had lost their Elders in an unsanctioned war with the Adita. The
remaining Elders held a meeting to discuss appointment of a new governing group
for the Mahat. During this time the Mahat attacked the planets of the second
universe in retaliation. A grievous departure from the laws, but the damage was
done. The Elders desperately wanted to prevent an all-out war and asked the
Adita Elders to give the second universe to the Mahat as reparations. Our Elders
acquiesced and in turn kept the third universe. Sort of an appeasement for
their losses.”

“Earth was the only inhabitable planet?”

Eve nodded. “The Adita have not always been in the
advanced form you see them today. The first of our kind evolved from a more
primitive species. A savage beast you humans would say. They were the first inhabitants
of Earth. When they arrived on Earth only the twelve Elders and maybe fifty
guards remained; all others had been lost in the battle. As I told you before, Earth
was inhabited only by the wildlife, and an abundance of it. Within a few months
the Elders had settled into their new home. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before
the Zari, also an unprincipled group, discovered the fertile planet. They arrived
and with them brought the first humans.”

“Brought them here? From where?”

“They were purchased from the trade colony. The Zari
used them as servants and some were kept like pets. They were not as advanced
as you are today.”

“Meaning?”

“They were like your pet dog, but slightly smarter and
more obedient.”

Austin nodded.

“The Elders avoided the Zari and the humans, keeping
to the caves and only coming out at night. Food was plentiful and they had no
need to fight. But then one of the Elders was caught stealing a goat. He was
discovered by a male human tending his master’s property. Of course the man
tried to fight, to defend his master’s possessions, but he was no match. The
Elder, as was custom for the victor, drank the blood of his kill. This fateful
encounter was the turning point in the Adita’s future. An event whose
consequence changed our way of life forever. For you see, the blood he drank
was the rarest of types. One they’d never tasted before. The Elder shared this
blood with the other Elders. Their physical form took on a rapid
transformation, turning them from beast into the Adita as you see them today.
The change took thirteen hours. Within ten years they’d multiplied from twelve
to twelve thousand and did so without the Zari’s knowledge.”

“That’s a thousand babies a year.”

“Our reproductive process is only forty-five days. The
latter part of those years saw the biggest surge in reproduction. Without the
Zari realizing it, they were sharing the planet with the Adita. And by the time
the Adita outnumbered the Zari it was too late. On the night of the ninth moon
they waged war, killing all the Zari, but sparing the humans.”

“And claimed Earth as their own.”

“Yes and then some.”

Austin nodded for her to go on.

“For millions of years the Adita thrived on Earth.
They learned the difference in your blood types and sought out the rare blood
they needed and only took selections from the fittest humans. The Adita grew
stronger, more intelligent as the years went by, and at their peak they were
the strongest species in the universes, defending the third universe from all others.
They reclaimed the second from the Mahat, forcing them to become nomads. They elected
themselves supreme leaders of the council of Elders. They thought they were
invincible.”

“They found out otherwise?”

“They discovered just how vulnerable they’d become,” Eve
replied. “When the plague hit, they were unprepared. Now they are weak and without
the blood they so desperately need in order to regain their former power. If
they were challenged in battle they would most likely suffer great losses, if
not total defeat. The only thing saving them is their ability to shield their
weaknesses from the prying eyes of their enemies.”

“Who would challenge them? The Mahat? Humans?”

Eve smirked at the very idea. “Humans would lose. No,
the Adita have many enemies, Mahat being only one, but none so near as the very
species they evolved from,” Eve responded. “You see, after the plague forced
the Adita to leave the planet, their blood supply was cut off. The Elders had
tried to prepare for this by taking a handful of uninfected humans with them
when they left, but it wasn’t enough. When the blood supplies diminished, and
in order for the Elders to live, some were left to starve. But they didn’t
starve. They reverted back to original form and turned on the Adita. The Adita were
still superior in every way and an uneasy truce was established.”