Chapter Thirteen
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“AMAROS JUST CONTACTED me,” Zoe informed Grace, tapping her temple. They’d just finished preparing dinner after putting a bunch of closets together. “They’ll be home in five minutes,” she added.
“Just in time to join us for our meal,” Grace said. She got another bowl out for Amaros and stirred the stew they’d made. One of the books they’d taken from the house they’d raided contained descriptions of plants. They’d managed to forage for fresh greens and had added them to the stew.
“Something smells good,” Amaros said when the knights entered the house a few minutes later.
Grace rushed to meet them in the north wing. Her eyes widened when she saw their bulging backpacks. “Did you leave any books in the library?” she joked.
“Just a couple,” Cam replied, ruffling her short multi-colored hair like she was five years old.
“You weren’t exaggerating about the size of the library,” Amaros said. They detoured to the great room where they’d set up their own library. Leaving their backpacks on the floor, they headed for the kitchen.
Zoe greeted her mate with a scorching kiss before handing him his bowl of stew. “Grace and I found some plants that should be edible,” she said. The venison was on the edge of expiring, which meant they would have to hunt for food again.
Amaros sank down onto a folding chair and cautiously tasted the stew. “This is good,” he said in approval.
“He isn’t dead yet, so I guess those mushrooms we added aren’t poisonous,” Grace joked.
Cam was too wound up to snicker with them. “I’m going to start reading through the plumbing books we found,” he told them.
Amaros nodded and his second left the room. “Camriel is certain his mate is on her way here,” he said in a low voice. “He sensed her again on our way to the city.”
“I’m pretty sure my hunch is right,” Zoe replied. “She’s making her way here on foot.”
“I can’t wait to meet her,” Grace said. “She must be a badass to walk all this way on her own.”
“We came across four dead people where I’d sensed trouble,” Amaros reported. “Someone had bashed their heads in.”
“That’s Cam’s favorite move,” Zoe said with a smirk.
“If his cambion did it, then they’ll be a perfect couple,” Grace said.
Camriel heard them despite their lowered voices. He switched on the battery-operated halogen light and began sorting through the new books they’d appropriated. Finding the tomes he’d stolen about plumbing, he sat down on a plush dark blue cushion Grace had taken from the resort and began reading.
Amaros and the females joined him after their meal. They all chose a book and settled onto cushions to brainstorm.
“This book describes how to build a septic tank,” Grace said, holding her tome up. “That would be perfect for our base!”
“I think my plan to use solar panels really could work,” Zoe said. “We just need to find some and attach them to the roof. The trees that grow around the outside of our base won’t block much of the light, as long as we trim their branches from time to time.”
“What about the hailstorms?” Grace pointed out. “They’ll be smashed to pieces in the first afternoon storm we have. The panels won’t work if they’re covered in snow during winter either.”
“My knights and I can help with that,” Amaros said confidently. “Or we will once more of them arrive and our power is boosted.”
“Show me that book about the septic tank, shorty,” Camriel requested. She handed it to him and he examined the diagrams. “We can definitely set this up,” he said in budding excitement. “It’ll be a lot of work, but I’m sure we can install indoor plumbing eventually.”
“I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have a hot shower,” Zoe said wistfully.
“Or a hot bath,” Grace added. “We should set up a gas oven, just in case our power goes out sometimes,” she suggested.
“We should have both gas and electric ovens, if we can figure out how to install gas,” Zoe figured. “We’ll have enough people living here to need more than one oven.”
“Let’s hope more of our squad turn up soon,” Amaros said, hoping to prompt another vision from his mate.
She gave him a wry look and shook her head. “I’ve still got nothing,” she told him.
“We’re going to need a lot of concrete,” Camriel said, reading what went into building a septic tank. “They usually use trucks to mix cement to pour something this big, but we’ll never get one past the boulders.”
“Unless we move the boulders,” Amaros figured. “If I had four more warriors, it would probably be enough to combine our power to shift them.”
“I guess not even being bonded to your cambion has given you enough strength to move it,” Grace said.
“Unfortunately, no,” Amaros agreed. “Even a minor deity might struggle to shift something that heavy.”
“I don’t suppose a bulldozer could move them,” Zoe said as she paged through her book on solar panels.
The knights exchanged a look and Camriel smacked himself on the forehead. “We’re so used to using our own strength that we forgot humans have invented heavy machinery,” he admitted.
“We’ll head to town tomorrow and see what we can find,” Amaros said. “I remember passing a hire yard with bulldozers and other equipment on the way to the lumberyard.”
“You’ll need a truck big enough to load one onto,” Zoe warned them.
“The lumberyard has one if the hire yard doesn’t,” Cam told her. It had hooks and pulleys and other equipment to lift heavy loads as well.
“We’ll go with you,” Grace said. “You might need us to watch your backs while you’re busy stealing the bulldozer.”
Amaros knew the females hated being left behind all the time and nodded. “We could use your help,” he agreed.
“The hire yard might even have a cement truck we could borrow,” Zoe said.
With luck, they would find everything they needed in one place.
She just hoped they could get the vehicles started without too much trouble.
Hopefully, their batteries would be okay and hadn’t gone flat from disuse yet.
The Rapture had only happened ten days ago. “Wow,” she murmured in realization.
“What?” Grace asked.
“It’s only been ten days since the Rapture,” Zoe said.
“Is that all?” the teen asked in surprise. “It feels like it happened months ago.”
“No kidding,” Zoe agreed. “At least the batteries shouldn’t be flat yet.”
“It takes longer than that before vehicles will be useless,” Grace confirmed. “We could always give them a jump start with cables if we need to,” she added.
This was all new to the knights, but they knew exactly what she was talking about. Fate had crammed a lot of knowledge into their heads. They just had to discover it each time they needed to know how to do something.
Camriel stayed up a bit longer after the others went to bed.
He filched another romance book from the ones Grace had taken from the elderly people’s house.
They were older and more tattered than the new ones that were stacked on the floor.
He liked the dramatic covers, so he’d decided to start with them first.
“This guy knows how to woo women,” Cam whispered in admiration, examining the cover of the book he’d just taken.
A handsome man with long blond hair held a buxom woman by the waist. His white shirt billowed in the wind to expose most of his torso as the ship they were on plowed through the waves.
The male model was on a bunch of different book covers, often shirtless.
His hair was usually blond, but was black and brown in some of them.
The women usually wore pretty gowns with their breasts overflowing the neckline.
Tucking the book inside his jacket, the warrior slunk off to bed to finish reading the other book he’d stayed up late to read.