Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) (42 page)

Jessie fell against the wall. She caught her breath before examining her leg.

‘Let me look,’ Eden said, catching his breath too, falling to his knees to check the wound.

‘It’ll take no time to heal,’ she said. ‘It’s just throbbing like hell.’

He held her gaze before looking back over his shoulder at the bloodied mess they’d defeated. ‘Quite the team,’ he said looking back at her. ‘Another fourth species?’

She nodded.

‘If they’re here to stay, I’m fucking moving out,’ he declared, grabbing her hand and leading her towards the alley.

But his humour couldn’t mask the concern in his eyes, not from her.

‘There’s only one Throme I’ve heard of,’ she said, surprised he hadn’t already brought it up. ‘The head of the Global Council.’

‘We need to keep moving,’ he said. ‘Try and catch up with them.’

But her hand fell lax. She took a step back. ‘Sirius,’ she said, almost on a whisper. ‘The Dog Star is also known as Sirius.’ She snapped her gaze back to his. ‘Eden…’ she said, knowing she didn’t need to add explanation or reveal her train of thought. Her train of thought that maybe the lycans weren’t the ones to start this: The Global Council were.

Eden held her gaze for a moment but he said nothing before reaching for her hand again. ‘We’ll find the children and then we’ll talk.’

But the second they reached the opening, they recoiled backwards, the bike barely missing them.

They both froze. The bike stopped. The rider looked over his shoulder at them.

‘Shit,’ Eden hissed.

‘The kids,’ she said.

‘We find them now and we’ll lead him straight to them,’ he declared. He looked across at her as the bike spun around. ‘Can you still run?’

She nodded. ‘As fast as you can keep up.’

Her leg throbbed, but it didn’t hold her back, her jaw clenched with grit determination as she ran alongside Eden, clearing obstacles at the same rate as him, both knowing the bike that roared behind them was all but clipping their tail.

They took a sharp right and a sharp left, making it as difficult as possible, chucking whatever obstacles they could in its way. Cutting across the street they looked left to see there was another, the rider revving up his engine as soon as he caught sight of them.

They ploughed into the alley directly opposite, taking the most narrow gaps they could, ducking through wire-mesh fencing before clearing the next.

‘Four,’ Jessie yelled out as they kept running. ‘I can hear four different engines. They’re cornering us off. They know this place inside out. There’s bound to be others on foot. The roof. We could head up to the roof and lose the bikes at least.’

‘And have them wait for us below?’ Eden shouted back. ‘Losing them is the only way.’

‘We can take them! You know what my tears have done to you, don’t you? That’s why you were so glib about taking on Pummel.’

‘Not glib,’ he yelled. ‘Cornered. Never show weakness when you’re cornered.’

But another bike veered into the alley in front of them, the back tyre skidding behind it, the other revving up from behind.

Eden caught a hold of her hand, taking a sharp left. He yanked further obstacles into the path before taking a right into the abandoned factory.

But another bike was already at the opening beyond, forcing them to double back as its engine roared through towards them.

Jessie tugged Eden right down a narrow lane, one that the bike would be crazy to pursue them down. But it did.

They took a right and another left, past graffiti-stained walls, both desperately searching the wire-mesh wall to their left for gaps.

‘This way,’ Jessie said, grabbing Eden’s hand, taking a left. They ran down the back of the houses, down another alley, the bikes in hot pursuit.

Jessie came to a standstill behind the wall, urging Eden to do the same.

‘We have to keep running,’ he said, attempting to pull her from the wall.

‘I have an idea.’

He frowned, but didn’t argue, plastering himself to the wall beside her.

She counted down the seconds as she heard the bike approach, closed her eyes for a brief moment, then stepped out in front of it.

She slammed her foot sideways onto the tyre, simultaneously grabbing hold of the handles, and crouched.

The abrupt standstill threw the cyclist high over her head. The bike nearly did a 180 flip with the force of its stop, but slammed back down onto its back, the force of Jessie’s grip bringing it back to the ground unaffected.

She looked across at Eden, his eyebrows raised.

‘Fuck,’ he hissed in admiration.

‘You can ride, I take it?’

He grinned. ‘You even have to ask?’

Eden revved the engine as she wrapped herself around the back of him. They skidded out onto the main street but it wasn’t long before two more bikes caught up with them.

Eden navigated the bike skilfully, opting to take the alleys again as Jessie kept a watchful eye over her shoulder.

They took two out along the way – one hitting a wall head on, another skidding and becoming entangled with a wire-mesh fence.

They sped out of the alley and across the road, startling another who immediately skidded out of control.

They ploughed into another alley, ducking under low girders, skirting abandoned cars except for the one Eden decided to skim up and over in an attempt to lose the rider behind. They mounted ramps, leaping over bins and discarded rubbish, Eden losing two more pursuers, one diving head first into an explosion of discarded wood, another hitting fallen debris and sending his tyres spinning out of control.

But another caught up again, closing in on them.

Jessie stared up as they passed through scaffolding.

‘Keep going,’ she said in Eden’s ear, hoping his reactions wouldn’t be quick enough to do anything but.

Tightening her thighs around his, she reached up, releasing her grip on him only as she grabbed the bar above.

She spun three-sixty twice to get momentum, the biker racing toward her not seeing her quick enough to work out what she was going to do. As Eden skidded to a standstill somewhere ahead, she slammed the pursuer clean in the face with both feet, knocking him off the bike, the bike hurtling towards Eden in a sideways skid until he moved out of its way.

Seeing the unnatural angle of the biker’s head, satisfied he wasn’t going to get up again, Jessie turned to face Eden.

She wiped her hand across her forehead as she drew level with him.

‘Now you’re just showing off,’ he said, adoration glinting in his eyes as she remounted the bike. ‘Though a little heads-up next time would be good.’

‘If you think I’m going to start being accountable to you,’ she said, easing astride the bike, locking her arms around his waist again, ‘think again.’

Eden revved up the engine again, spinning them out of the alley and back onto the main street.

T
hey searched
until dawn split the horizon, Eden and Jessie intermittently switching from the bike to hunt for the kids on foot.

‘I can’t even sense them,’ Jessie said, her hands low on her hips as she turned a hundred and eighty degrees to look in the opposite way down the alley.

‘They’re long gone,’ Eden said. ‘They’ve probably headed straight for home. I hope to fuck they stick together.’

Jessie turned to face him again. There was genuine concern in his eyes as he too gave the surroundings the once over before squinting up at the rooftops against the early morning light. He cupped his hands behind his neck, let out a quiet sigh, the light breeze toying with his T-shirt as he stood braced.

As his gaze met hers again, she remained fixed to the spot. ‘I need to beat them to Jask,’ she said. ‘He might not be the instigator we feared, but I still need to stop this.’

‘You really think he’s going to listen to you?’

‘I have to try.’

Eden scanned the surroundings again. ‘Let’s go somewhere and talk.’ He looked back at her. ‘Somewhere private.’

‘We don’t have time.’

‘Those kids are on foot. It’ll take them at least an hour and a half to get to the north. You’ll be there in a third of that time on the bike.’

‘The pack needs to be out there finding them.’

‘It’s almost daylight. They stand the best chance this time of the morning as long as they stay vigilant. They would have been trained. Just ten minutes, Jessie, come on.’

He kicked the stand back off the bike, revving up the engine as he waited for her.

With another glance over her shoulder, Jessie mounted the back of it, Eden taking off as soon as she wrapped her arms around his waist.

He took a steady pace back out onto the road, still watching for any sign of small figures in the buildings’ recesses, or scampering through side alleys. But the south side of Blackthorn was deserted, its desolation exacerbated by the ominous glow of the encroaching light. But instead of heading to the hub border, closer to the north, Eden did an about turn, picking up speed as he headed to the upper outskirts of the south.

Jessie tapped on his shoulder to get his attention, but he remained focused on the road, his hands locked on the handlebars.

He slowed his pace only as he pulled down what was once a residential street. He tucked the bike into a side alley alongside an end-terrace house before tapping her thigh to dismount. She looked ahead at the dead end and across her shoulder at the barren wasteland that stretched beyond the low mesh fence. A few feet behind it lay a disused, rusted rail track, the breeze altering the shade of the long, dry tufts of grass. Beyond that lay walls – walls she knew bordered Blackthorn with Lowtown.

It was a residential street like so many others in the area – back-to-back houses and courtyards in what would have once been a thriving area: children’s bikes and scooters left abandoned on the kerb, the sound of adults talking and laughing in doorways, and maybe even birdsong too, filling the air. Because in her dim and distant memories, she remembered it. She remembered what life had once been like. Now nothing stirred but the breeze in the silence of the enforced new world.

She flinched as Eden nudged past her. She followed him over the low wall as he led the way into the small porch and pushed open the unhinged door into the derelict house.

It was colder inside than out, not helped by the tiled floor. The hallway was tight, the bare staircase ahead narrow, aided only by a single rail to the right. A glimmer of light shone from whatever room lay directly at the top, but Eden remained downstairs, taking the first door to the left, into what would have once been the lounge.

Once she’d joined him inside, he closed the door behind them.

She stood scanning the shadows, the strangeness of being out of the row that had been her home for so many decades, let alone being stood in such unfamiliar surroundings, anchoring her to the spot. The mustiness of disuse lingered in the air, dust motes, awakened by their entry, glinting in the daylight that cast shards of light from gaps in the partially drawn curtains. The carpet was as worn as the walls, blocks of discolour indicating where pictures and furniture had remained positioned for years until taken during the evacuation or, more likely, stolen in the aftermath.

Jessie wrapped her arms around herself as she looked across at the small double sofa that had been left behind, the focus of light, the surreal sense of the bare backdrop, like being in the wings of an abandoned theatre.

Unease crept up her spine. She didn’t want the doubt. Doubt was the last thing she needed, but it was there again, taking root deep in the pit of her stomach.

She turned to face Eden as he remained leaning back against the door, her necklace wrapped around his hand, the vial swaying from its silver chain. She looked back into his eyes that almost looked distant in their trouble. ‘What are we doing here, Eden?’

‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating towards the sofa.

She glanced over her shoulder at it again, then back at Eden. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I need to talk to you.
Please
, sit down.’

Jessie backed up slowly, before perching on the edge of the sofa, remaining wary as he retained his stance at the door.

‘This is definitely it?’ he asked, holding the chain up. ‘This is what binds you?’

The unease was back in her chest as her heart lowered itself to its knees in the hope she hadn’t been wrong to trust him. ‘Is that why we’re here? So far away from the row? Did you want to prove it?’

‘In part.’

‘You didn’t believe me?’

‘I needed to be completely sure.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I need to be completely sure you’re bound to me.’

Jessie squeezed her hands together in her lap. ‘You didn’t need to take it, Eden. I told you I was going to help you. I gave you that vial…’

‘But having this means you can’t hurt me, doesn’t it?’

She frowned. Her stomach clenched in discomfort. ‘Why would I want to hurt you?’

‘I need to talk to you, Jessie. I need to explain a few things.’

Her heart beat so heavily her chest ached. She kept her gaze steadily on his as the prospect of betrayal created fissures in her heart. ‘What have you done?’ she asked quietly.

‘I’m not a con,’ he said.

It wasn’t a shock. She was surprised how little a shock it was. But her true question came out with a reluctance that she knew reflected her lack of want of the answer. ‘Then
who
are you, Eden?’

‘I work for the Third Species Control Division. I was hired especially for this case.’

The room faded into darkness. Hearing the declaration grace his lips – lips she had kissed, connected with, come to believe – caused her veins to clog with the force of her thickening blood. But for a moment, beyond the fear of the reality that faced her, there was only one word she could focus on. ‘
Hired
?’

‘I was sent here to get you – undercover.’

If she could have stood, she would have, but her legs were immoveable. Her palms burned as her nails dug into them. She glanced at his forearm.

‘Fake,’ he confirmed. ‘I even got to choose them. I probably got a bit carried away but I had to make myself stand out to Pummel somehow.’

Her gaze snapped back to his. ‘This was all a set-up? You got close to me for a
job
?’

His expression was as unreadable as if the mask was back. Only she knew this was the real him. The face she’d come to trust, to know, to understand, to care about –
that
had been the mask.

‘I’m a Curfew Enforcement Officer.’

She closed her eyes for just a second as she reminded herself how she felt was not the crisis here. The crisis was far greater than the betrayal, the deceit. ‘I knew it,’ she said quietly. ‘I knew you’d try again.’

‘Try what again?’

Her gaze snapped to his. ‘Don’t act innocent. Not now.’

‘Jess, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I’m talking about the fact that earlier wasn’t the first time I’d been snatched. A couple of weeks ago, I was knocked out cold right outside the lock-up. They hit the wall trying to escape with me in the back of a car, just like that van did. It killed them outright. They weren’t cons though. The device one had in his jacket isn’t from around here. They know about me, don’t they? The authorities know about me.’

He nodded, but his eyes were dark again in their pensiveness. ‘But I knew nothing about that attempted kidnap. I promise you.’

She finally found the strength to stand. ‘I don’t want your promises; I want that necklace. You have to let me go, Eden. You know the consequences if you don’t.’

But Eden remained composed, unflinching at the door. ‘There are other things I need to explain first.’

‘Things you were too much of a coward to explain without that necklace in your possession?’ As he dared to hold her gaze, to maintain the connection that now felt severed, she snapped. ‘You lied. You lied to me.’

‘I haven’t lied.’

‘You hid the truth. Same thing.’

‘I had no choice.’

‘The little girl – Honey – was she a part of the lie? Something you could manipulate me with? Like you’ve manipulated me all along?’

‘She’s real, Jessie. They used her as the hook to get me in here – to persuade me into this suicide mission. So, yes, they know about you. Pummel was recognised and questions were raised as to why he hadn’t aged as much as he should have. They told me they didn’t know what you were. I was to find out and find out how to get you out. If I delivered you to them, they offered to save Honey’s life in exchange.’

‘In exchange for them locking me in their Facility and throwing away the key?’

‘Of finding a cure.’

‘For the good of mankind, huh? You’ve played me all along.’

‘No. That’s what I need you to understand. I came in here for one reason and one reason only – and it has
never
been about delivering you to them. I know how fucked up the system is that I work for, Jess – now more than ever after the last couple of weeks. I know about the corruption. You must have heard of how they sent Caitlin Parish right into the lions’ den to get what they wanted. I’m not stupid enough to think I’m any different. I’m as expendable to them as she was.

‘Sirius Throme was the one who hired me. But there was no way he’d let a grunt like me in on a powerful secret like you and let me live. He was never going to help Honey. I knew how it was going to work: he was going to have me take you to him and then he’d kill my family. I’d die if I failed, I’d die if I succeeded.

‘But Sirius made the biggest mistake thinking I would help them find a way to fuel their unjust system further; thinking I’d give them even more of an excuse to reinforce this elitism that’s crushing one too many of us. I came in here with the attitude that they can go and fuck themselves – I was out for my family.

‘All Sirius had done was give me a way out, a reason to no longer be a part of the system I despise. From the beginning I had intended only to come in here and get that cure for myself. I planned to use it to help Honey, then I’d bring my family across the border into Blackthorn, away from the authorities who’d be looking for them. We’d be no worse off in Blackthorn than in Lowtown. It would be no different to what I’d grown up doing – ducking, diving and surviving. But I didn’t expect to develop feelings for you. I didn’t expect it to become as much about saving you.’

‘Then why not free me? Why take the necklace? Because you thought your confession meant I would turn on you?’

‘I couldn’t be sure, Jess. I’m standing here telling you that I’m everything you hate. You have every reason not to believe me. You have every reason to disappear from here. I didn’t want to lose you, Jess. I didn’t want you to leave thinking I’d betrayed you.’

She hovered on the spot as she stared deep into his eyes.

‘I needed to warn you,’ he said, ‘in case you did choose to leave, that I think Sirius Throme orchestrated the kidnap of those lycan young; that he sent me here the night they arrived for a reason. I don’t think the two are coincidental. I think those lycans were his backup plan should I fail. If I didn’t make it, my bet is he was going to turn the exact same threat on Pummel as I did: to tell Jask where they were. He gave me three days, Jessie – three days to return with you. Once those three days were up, he was coming in to get you one way or another.’

‘Using the same army?’

‘Maybe. He’s expecting me in the next couple of hours.’ He closed the gap between them. ‘You’re not the only one he knows about. Your tears – I’ve seen something similar before. Someone I know works at The Facility showed them to me. She let it slip one night that she had magic in a tube. She wanted me to try a little. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to why.’

Her heart pounded, her breathing shallow. ‘They already have us? They already have my kind?’

‘And my bet is they know what your tears can do. I think they’re building a superhuman army to invade, Jessie.’

Something that would swim permanently in their veins and bond with the very fabric of what they were – renewing, strengthening, honing and perfecting. An army of them was unthinkable – the power behind the human invasion, any chance of succeeding, finally making sense.

She stepped back over to the sofa and perched on the edge before her legs gave way. ‘This can’t get any worse.’

He crouched in front of her. ‘Jessie, you said two others tried to take you. Is it possible they had been watching you enter the lock-up?’

She stared at him. ‘Why?’

‘Is it?’

A surge of panic consumed her. ‘Yes.’

‘Could they have seen those drawings like I did?’

Her pulse almost flatlined again.

He caught hold of her hands in his. ‘I think whoever preceded me saw your visions and reported that back. I think Sirius Throme wants to wipe out the third species, but I think the only way he can do that is to take out
his
opposition. He wants the vampire leader, Jess. I think he wants you because he knows you’ve seen who the vampire leader is.’