The Book of Eva: Clone, Book One Page 10

  Eva reached up and brushed her lips. She turned and spoke, drawing me out of my own plots. “When his fingers slid along my skin, I felt like the only woman he’d ever been with. Dante had a way of worshipping flesh with his touch and kiss.” She’d gone into a trance, staring across the room at something that wasn’t there. As she continued with her story, I shivered and listened to her tragic tale, wishing I could change my own, feel Axel’s hands on my body again, see his smile, and taste his lips. I missed him.

  Dante pushed his hands under her coat and shoved it from her shoulders to a pile at her feet. His strong arms came around her, lifting her up. Eva wrapped her legs around him as he brought her around to rest on the desk. Dante’s lips were all over her. Her throat, shoulder, as he slipped the straps off to bare her breasts.

  Passion lit her face as she spoke of the encounter. Hate and love rolled into one emotion, and her voice grew gruff. She spoke of how he’d tasted her and the way his fingers skimmed over her body. What he did to her. If I had not been confined to the bed, I might have fled, feeling as though I intruded upon an intimate moment.

  The plastic surgeries she’d suffered had fixed her scars, erased the torture of her past, and ensured no one would believe she could be Ana’s clone, on or off holo-video.

  She’d loved the way Dante stroked her skin, how he frantically tore at her clothes, the hunger in his eyes. Need rolled through her like a tsunami, igniting desire. She let go, lost herself in the wake.

  Heat. Lust. It was hard to believe his feelings and the moment weren’t real. She’d wanted to believe his touch, the way he devoured her meant something more than fulfilling a mission. But Eva would not let herself dwell on it, or the pain it caused. She tugged at his buckle and released him. “Now.”

  She didn’t care that a camera watched. The feel of him inside her was glorious. In that moment, she believed he loved her and the sex wasn’t sex, but the baring of souls. She knew the moment she was lost when he took her with him, and she hated him for it. Loved him for it, and eventually she would kill him for it. Every nerve in her body danced, and she couldn’t hold back the scream, or the emotions that pummeled her.

  Dante followed her release. It didn’t matter. The Institute had taken precautions, shots to prevent conception. She would never have another child, and, for that, Eva told me she was glad. When he held her gaze, she was startled. She thought she glimpsed the soul of a man in love—a man who loved her. Eva swallowed and turned away, unable to bear the intense feelings he’d triggered. A tear slipped free, ran down her cheek and into her hair. He cupped her chin and brought her gaze back to his. He’d toyed with her heart, made her care.

  She didn’t want to care. She didn’t want to love him. For the first time since she’d escaped, Eva didn’t want to be human.

  “Are you okay?” Dante stroked his thumb along her jaw and studied her with a tenderness that made her insides twist.

  “Yes.” No. She hadn’t been, though she covered it well. Eva collapsed on the desk, a broken pile of flesh and bones, her soul fragmented, her newfound heart, broken.

  “I’m sorry it was so public, but in my mind, it wasn’t. I desired you. I’ve missed you, craved you. Whatever you think, I’d never hurt you.”

  She jerked her face out of his hand and turned away. “We need to clean up and start the tour.”

  “Eva,” he said softly. “Would you look at me?”

  “No,” She didn’t want to talk about it. Dante used her like all the others. He’d fed her pretty lies, treated her like he cared, but in the end, he’d hurt her, too.

  “Please, Eva.”

  “I know my place in this revolution, Dante. You don’t need to apologize.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What is it like?” She shoved him away and hopped off the desk. She should have been acclimatized to the indifference, but it still hurt, especially when the man responsible for it had been the only one she’d trusted—loved.

  “You. You mean more to me than this revolution, Eva, and considering this is what I have lived my entire life to fulfill, that’s saying a lot.”

  Oh how she’d wanted to believe him, but instead of saying anything, she nodded her head, straightened her clothes, and walked to the corridor where they would start the inspection of the premises, determined to finish the game.

  “What do you mean you didn’t fuck Stephan?” Objects crashed to the floor. Something large and breakable, hit the wall. The fight rocked the house, and though the walls didn’t truly shake, I could swear the floor crumbled from beneath me as though we’d been hit with a quake off the Richter scale. I dropped onto my bed and hugged my knees to my chest as a sense of dread invaded.

  “I have live feed. I watched you screw him on top of a desk!”

  “You’re one to talk. You keep a mistress in my home.” This time my mother screamed back. “I wasn’t at the satellite station today. I told you, I had an appointment with my hairdresser. How dare you accuse me of infidelity. I’ve looked the other way for years. I want that woman out of my house. Today!” A door slammed, and my mother ran past my room, crying.

  “Get back here.” My father raged from the other end of the long hallway but didn’t pursue. “If you weren’t such a frigid bitch, I wouldn’t have to seek sex elsewhere. You will host this party tonight, and you will not embarrass me. And you better believe, when it’s over, I’m settling up with you and your boyfriend.” His door slammed, too, and the house was quiet again.

  I could do nothing more than weep.

  That night he held a party to celebrate Aeropia’s rise to power, called Ascension Day. It also happened to be my birthday. Every person of power in Aeropia was there. It was the night I lost my innocence, and then, the only man I’d ever loved.

  9

  If I’d learned one thing from my parents, it was this: If you know a man or woman’s fears, you can control them. My mother feared losing me. My father feared loss of power. Cook, was afraid my parents would find out she let me eat something vile. To be human is to have fears, and I was pretty sure what Eva’s was. That she would return to being a clone. The codes were all that stood between her and her goal of the clones’ liberation, something we both desired. “I have what you want.”

  Eva turned from where she stared out the tower window. “You hold them?”

  The codes were the reason she’d remained in my room, at my side. She didn’t have to say it, I just knew. I knew because once I had been desperate enough to steal them, all for the same reason. “I do.” I would die the moment I gave them to her, but had already come to terms with my end. I couldn’t live without him. Death had become acceptable. I only prayed she’d make it quick.

  “Give them to me.”

  “Sit down. It’s my turn to tell a story and, when I’m done, you can have them.” I would not back out on the deal and had meant every word. The codes would be hers, when I finished, but not until.

  “You have already told me about him.”

  There was so much more I needed to say, so much I’d kept to myself I had to confess. Some because I could no longer stay silent and some because I needed her to understand I wasn’t a bad person. For some reason that even I didn’t know, it held importance. The time for hoarding the memories was over. “Not everything.”

  As her tale ended, mine began. This lesson was not one-sided. Eva, too, had something to learn—that everyone deserved to be loved.

  She sank into her seat. “Talk.”

  I am an only child, but I didn’t grow up alone, even though my father’s position often took my parents away. It was during this time I would walk the estate, prowl the gardens, wade in the pond, sit under the oak at the edge of the woods, or go to that special place to share time with a clone.

  The wounds in the planet healed long before I came around, but there were scars, reminders about, especially if I stepped off the property. Barbed wire, gouged earth, partially demolished buildings, and soldiers everywhere I l
ooked. Hunger filled the faces of those I passed on the streets. Despair etched many expressions.

  But more than the human race had been touched by mankind’s greed and thirst for power. Occasionally, I’d spot a squirrel with three eyes or a six-legged frog, their genetics forever altered because of selfishness. We could not run from what we’d done, no matter how hard we tried.

  We had migrated toward the equator after the climate change, taking Northern crops with us into once tropical areas, only to discover the war had contaminated the soil so much, we could no longer grow food to sustain us. We were crowded and hungry. Few liberties existed.

  Famine riots destroyed peace. Mobs roamed the countryside, stealing what food stores they could. Soldiers and citizens clashed, no longer knowing enemy from friend.

  It took an iron fist to crush the resistance and stop the killing, a leader who gathered all who resisted and executed any who stood against him. And for a while, Aeropia settled into a form of peace.

  The cost was high, one perhaps, if we’d thought it over and let our courage rule our hearts instead of our fears, we would be a different society. With the new laws, came a loss of freedom. Small at first, the changes to our lives seemed insignificant. And then several small changes became larger ones.

  With every shift of power, new laws were drafted and the noose their fears placed around their necks grew tighter. Each law, written in the blood of the fallen, constricted Aeropia’s ability to stand alone, for the citizens to think for themselves, to act outside of a voice of authority. Aeropia’s leaders stripped them of their courage and morals, giving them only enough to pacify their needs and quell the questions of why they tolerated tyrants.

  The population feared starvation, our law enforcement. The people feared speaking their minds or being seen as a rebel, someone who could start trouble.

  By the time the Braun family rose to power, my father ruled a flock of sheep. The citizens of Aeropia went where he told them, did what he said, and never asked why. They might as well have been wearing the clone’s girdles.

  Not everyone had weathered the war the way my family and their inner circle had, and I was more than aware of that. General Axis spent a great deal of time at my home, overseeing the affairs of the country, while my parents traveled for diplomatic reasons. Whenever he was around, so was his clone. For two years after I met Axel, I would seek him out on the grounds in the summer in our most northern region.

  “Have you ever drawn or painted?”

  Eva shook her head.

  “I did,” I said and smiled as the memory took me back. I sketched a lot in the garden and fields. One day, I straddled a fallen tree inside the old garrison building, capturing the image of a bee. Roses of every color grew around where I sat, leaving a sweet scent hanging in the air. Cherry trees shed their blossoms in the soft breeze, raining down the romance of early summer.

  “Olivia.”

  I turned my head to catch Axel watching. My skirt was hiked around my knees. Not the most ladylike position, but before I could correct my bad form, he walked over and swung his leg over the tree to sit across from me.

  “What are you doing?”

  I bit the end of my pencil and flipped the pad around, showing him my drawing of the drone.

  “That looks just like it.”

  “Thank you.” I blushed and dropped my eyes. “There are not as many as there used to be. They are almost a memory. I wanted to capture its image while I could. They like the flowers in the old orchards, and there’s a small hive in the corner, but it is the first I’ve ever noticed.”

  “You did very well, and I think there are more than you believe. Perhaps they won’t disappear. They are survivors—like you.”

  “Perhaps.” My parents had never paid any attention to my art. His praise brought high color to my cheeks for a lot of reasons, the biggest that I crushed on him. I looked up and smiled. “Will you sit for me?”

  “I am sitting.”

  “No. I mean, will you let me draw you while you sit there?”

  “If my keeper catches us…” He twisted to eye the opening to my walled-in world. “I should be working.” Working meant cleaning the property, what he did when General Axis was in residence. And helping Cook, who I now commanded.

  In essence, Axel worked for me. “He won’t, and I’ll draw quickly. They never look in here, it’s my secret place, and I want a picture of you.” The courtyard of the collapsed building that used to be the palace’s garrison had become overgrown with flowers and trees. They’d crept inside the once-enclosed structure over the last hundred years, turning its once combative environs into a place of peace. Many of the smaller flowers I’d transplanted from the gardens that were closer to the house. It was my secret paradise, my sanctuary—a place I could be Olivia, not the president’s sick daughter.

  Vines covered the old stone walls, and the roof was completely gone, blown away by a direct blast of artillery during the unrest and struggle to form boundaries that followed the war. It opened the building to the sky. Nobody had bothered to rebuild on the old ruins or reclaim the ground where they stood, and I was glad for it. Many forbidden conversations took place there over my summers, starting with this one.

  Axel gave a nod. I bit my lip and studied him before I translated his face to paper, each nuance captured with a soft stroke of lead. His choppy hair, shaved down every four months, was ready for another cut. It framed his strong face and passionate eyes. I did not know how anyone could look at him, or any of the clones, and call them soulless. Axel was anything but.

  When done, I flipped the pad around again.

  “I don’t have a chip in the picture.” He smiled, his eyes alight in excitement. “May I try?”

  I handed him the pencil and pad.

  “I could close my eyes and draw you,” he said. “I remember everything from the sparkle in your eyes to the dimple in your cheek when you smile.”

  “That kind of talk could be lethal.” I forced myself not to giggle.

  He frowned and pushed the paper and graphite pencil back at me.

  “Oh, no.” I nudged it back. “I didn’t mean it that way. I meant to my heart. Girls like it when boys talk like that. It’s all poetic.”

  He shook his head. “I only speak the truth. Not trying to be lethal, or this poetic thing you speak of.” He returned his attention to the pad. His hand moved across the page with impatience, making several marks. Every now and then he’d look up and pause, then return to the paper, scratching this way and that. Axel stopped drawing and stared at it for several seconds, as though uncertain he wanted to show me.

  “Axel?” I bit my lip and smiled, ready to snatch it from his hands and look. I’d never been so curious or anxious to see how someone viewed me. “May I see?”

  He turned the pad around.

  My breath caught in my throat. I stared, unable to speak.

  “Do you like it?”

  “I…” I reached out and touched the drawing lightly with my fingertips, in awe of the gift he possessed. I could not form the words to express what I wanted to say. I opened my mouth and shut it, too stunned to speak.

  The excitement died in his eyes. He handed the pad back. “I’m not as good as you are.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is amazing.” My gaze swept over the masterpiece that had come to him with such ease. What talent. The impatience of the strokes, both hard and soft, some bringing features on my face forward, others pushing some back. I’d never seen passion translated to a page. I’d never looked so beautiful.

  The young woman stared back at me, and even though it was in black lead on white paper, I could almost see the blue of her eyes and the soft honey color of her hair. Light crowned her head like a halo, and I thought it was one of the prettiest images I’d ever looked at. But that could not be me. I was not the image he’d captured. I was weak, sick, tired. “You made me look so good.”

  “You are—just as I captured you.”

  I leaned forwa
rd, closing the space between us. “Do you really think…?”

  “Clone!”

  I jerked my face from his and looked over my shoulder. “General Axis. I’ll distract him while you get back to your task.” I scrambled from my seat and gave him a quick wave before starting back toward the house. For a moment, I’d almost kissed him, and I believed he would have let me. That day would be only the beginning of clandestine meetings.

  All summer, I’d meet Axel in my secret spot. Sometimes we’d draw. Other times I’d read him a book. After a while, I taught him to read. They were nothing more than ancient history books from my classes, or romances my parents were not aware I’d hidden away, but he absorbed the books as though they were grandly written novels. His excitement was contagious, and the more I saw him, the deeper I fell.

  One day, we waltzed to the sounds of songbirds. General Axis was way too busy to watch Axel, and he didn’t house him with the palace clones, making it easier for us to sneak away. This day had been no different, and he’d managed to escape while everyone ate lunch. I was glad. Frustrated with my parents for demanding I move forward with my life, I’d been forced to participate in the soiree this year, and the dreaded day kept creeping closer, setting me on edge.

  When I mentioned my health was too delicate for the more physical exercise a ball would entail, my father arranged an Elizabethan theme, complete with elaborate gowns and period dances, which I’d been informed were tame enough even I could perform them.

  The moment he arrived, I could sense him studying me. “I have to attend this formal party.”

  “What’s the problem?” He stepped into our forbidden garden.

  “I’ve never danced or participated in any sports. I’m a bit of a klutz, too.” I flipped a book open and pointed at diagrams of couples demonstrating some of the steps. “I can’t do this. I’m hopeless. I’ve been reading this for days, and I still don’t remember all the moves. They chose this particular style because I can’t do anything more physical, but I’m completely lost. I wish they wouldn’t force this. I really don’t want to do it.”