Watercolour Smile

Watercolour Smile

Seraph Black Series

Book
Two

Jane Washington

Copyright 2016

The author has provided this ebook for your personal use only. It may not be re-sold or made publically available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law
. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Edited by David Thomas

ISBN-10: 099427954X

ISBN-13: 9780994279545

Table of Contents

Dedication

Chapter
One
:
The Messenger

Chapter
Two
:
Seraph Lela Black

Chapter
Three
:
Weston-Spawned Bastards

Chapter
Four
:
Awkward Bowling

Chapter
Five
:
Angel of No Mercy

Chapter
Six
:
The Average Life-Span of a Thug

Chapter
Seven
:
Beware the Hunter

Chapter
Eight
:
Down the Rabbit Hole

Chapter
Nine
:
A Mist of Sorrow and Blood

Chapter
Ten
:
The Devil Deals in Happiness

Chapter
Eleven
:
Noah Would Never

Chapter
Twelve
:
Behind Closed Doors

Chapter
Thirteen
:
Bitches Love Xylophones

Chapter
Fourteen
:
Feelings

Chapter
Fifteen
:
Victims of Society

Chapter
Sixteen
:
Victims of the Heart

Chapter
Seventeen
:
The Wise Old Owl

Chapter
Eighteen
:
The Unbearable Weight of Possibility

Chapter
Nineteen
:
The Middle Man

Chapter
Twenty
:
Beware the Beast

Chapter
Twenty-One
:
Patchwork Seraph

Chapter
Twenty-Two
:
The Hole in the Floor

Chapter
Twenty-Three
:
The Hole in My Heart

Chapter
Twenty-Four
:
Walking Dead Will Have My Head

Chapter
Twenty-Five
:
Brothers in Arms

The Encounter…

Letter to the Readers

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

-Edgar Allan Poe

I want her to touch me.

I spent the last month perfecting a gift for her, but now I’m getting ahead of myself… wondering what it will be like to debase her. Not like that. Debase her; degrade her; strip away the things that make her strong, that define her. Like an apple, you know? If you have any idea what kind of pesticides cling to the skin of an apple, you would appreciate the virtue of peeling it all away. I want to pick apart her polluted exterior and when I reveal the fleshy underside of her human condition, she will be born again…
mine
. Her eyes will crack open with the fresh sight of a newborn, and mine will be the first face that she sees.

The only face that she sees.

She will say my name
…

“
Oi!
You going to pay for that?”

I tightened my grip on the bag of fertilizer, hoisting it onto the counter.

“Sorry. Daydreaming.” I offered the guy a smile, making sure to tamp back on the intensity. It was tiresome to pander to strangers this way… but it was necessary. A twist of the lips, the flash of a dimpled cheek, just enough of a squint to imply that happiness was weighted in my stare… and they relaxed. Like magic.

His attention skittered to the fertilizer as he counted out my cash, the annoyance already running away from his features.
What an easy-going twat
.

“No problem,” he said. “Doing some gardening?”

“Not really.” I smiled once more, and he smiled back, as though I had told a joke.

“Enjoy your afternoon!” He watched enthusiastically as I hefted the bag over my shoulder before he turned to the next customer: an ordinary numbskull, who had reached the age in which men trade in their hair for an over-generous portion of fat.

I allowed my smile to filter away as I got back to my truck. That would never be me; that fat, happy, dumb man. I tossed the bag beneath the tarpaulin that covered the back of my truck—on top of the other bags that already lined the tray. It was crazy the lengths that I had to go to just to make a decent bomb, these days. Different stores, different credit cards, different names. There is always someone watching, someone monitoring where you go and what you buy.
The gift of modern freedom
, I supposed. Freedom simply wasn’t as free as it used to be.

Things had been much easier when I was a child… Seraph used to love my fireworks.

Punching the dial for the radio, I cranked down my windows and geared the truck back onto the highway, settling in for the drive home. An alert on my phone sounded just as a pocket-sized, pink hatchback blasted past my truck, distracting me. I pressed a button for my phone to announce the notification.

You have a new message
, my self-built automated system told me.

“Play,” I replied.

You aren’t going to want to hear this, but our tail on the boy ran into some trouble—Silas must be running interference.

“Reply,” I ground out, as my phone finished reading out the message.

Please state your message
.

“What the fuck do you mean, trouble? What
kind of trouble?”

Do you mean: ‘Luck’?

“No. I meant fuck.”

Sending: ‘What the duck do you mean, trouble? What kind of trouble?’

“I need to fix your vocabulary.”

I waited, tapping my fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as another miniscule car tried to pass me. I swerved, cutting it off, and the woman leaned on her horn for as long as it took for her to realise that I hadn’t been intending to merge, and then for the second longer it took for her to glance up into my window. After that she backed the hell off and decidedly to meekly follow my snails-pace a good distance behind me. She was probably on the phone to the police, but they wouldn’t care. They had better things to investigate, like the pyrotechnic fuse blasting caps that went missing from the nearby quarry in Arlington just this morning and were now packed under my passenger seat.

You have a new message
, my phone piped up.

“Play.”

He’s dead.

“Reply.”

Please state your message
.

“How dead, Dominic? All he had to do was win the boy over before the Adairs or Quillans get scared and decide to keep him with Seraph. I’m going to be
seriously
pissed off if they get him. I need him.”

Did you mean: ‘Missed’?

“No. I meant PISSED.”

Sending: How dead, Dominic? All he had to do was win the boy over before the Adairs or Quillans get scared and decide to keep him with Seraph. I’m going to be seriously kissed off if they get him. I need him.

“Goddamn.”

A ringing sound grated against my ears, and I growled an order for my phone to accept the call.

“You need to fix your system’s vocab.” Dominic’s voice flooded the cab of the truck, thick and grated by too many cigarettes. There was an influential timbre in the way that Dominic projected his words, but lately that influence was flirting with something that reeked of scare-tactics. I blamed the cigarettes; they revealed the gritty underside of his personality by layering his lungs in gravel to match the rest of him. “And he’s dead enough to not be sending back pings,” Dominic continued. “His GPS has been trashed and his line is dead. Nobody has heard from him in weeks.”

“That doesn’t mean dead. That means missing.”

“It means dead, boy. He’s either six feet deep or compromised, and I don’t take well to the C-word. I like F-words like
fossilised
, and S-words like
silenced
. Trust me, he’s better-off six feet deep. I’m practising positive thinking.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“I’m positive that I’ll kill someone if the boy doesn’t start cooperating.”

“Bring in someone else, then. Dumb muscle is cheap enough if you look in the right places, and they’re good at flexing the compliance out of people. Give them Gerald’s address and tell them to smash things until the boy calls us, begging for a second chance. Or maybe Gerald could be instrumental?”

Dominic snorted, the sound carrying a hint of derision. He said, “I didn’t choose Gerald for his skills in persuasion. I chose him because I thought he’d be easy enough to manipulate. He’s a glutton and a bully, but he’s not smart enough to coerce Tariq into anything. Tariq hasn’t even spoken to him for at least a month now: he just delivers envelopes of cash to the mailbox and leaves. Why don’t we intercept him on the way to school, run him off the road and truss him up?”

“I don’t know,” I hedged.       

“I don’t need your permission.” Dominic seemed to be amused. “That’s not what these conversations are about.”

“Listen, we’ve threatened him before and it didn’t work. That kid is a vault; from what we can tell he hasn’t even shared our talks with Seraph. He’s locking it all down and hiding it away. Maybe he’s bad at coping with shit, or maybe he’s a genius. I don’t know, but it’s working in his favour. Seraph doesn’t know a thing, so she’s not diving in to save him.”

Over the line, Dominic heaved out a sigh, and I could hear the soft rustle of expensive leather as he shifted around in his seat. “I suppose you’re right… but coercion can be bought in many ways.”

“The boy won’t be interested in money; the Adairs and Quillans are slipping him enough cash to fund a small army. Find another way.”

“Maybe you should take care of him. The hypnotist doesn’t need your unique brand of encouragement anymore, and we’ve gone dark with Seraph for the time being; you can’t possibly be that busy.”

“I’m stocking up on explosives.”

“Do that in your own time.”

“All time is my own time.”

“You have issues, you know that? You’re an egotistical maniac.”

“If I have issues, it’s because of
your
medication.”

“
My
medication is going to win us this war.”

“There is no war, Dominic, you’re getting ahead of yourself again.”

“The hypnotist is showing real potential. Before the end of the year, I’ll deliver us a war—and that’s a promise.”

“Whatever. Irrelevant. I’m busy.” I flicked my turn signal and pulled off the highway, navigating the truck down a smooth dirt road that ran alongside a stretch of maintained farmland.

There was a country manor set back into the hills behind two of the front paddocks, and it was draped across the countryside in a way that made it appear even bigger than it was, as though someone had taken the four corners in hand and stretched it out to accommodate the uneven terrain. I turned down the second driveway branching off from the road, my truck slowing to a belligerent amble as I passed the sign that was set with crooked, country elegance into the Kentucky bluegrass creeping along the base of the mailbox.

S. Stevens
Farmstead
, it read.

The property actually belonged to Dominic, but Steven Stevens was his go-to alias for all off-the-books property transactions. He liked to be blatant with his power, and nothing bespoke power better than boasts of invincibility. Dominic liked to sing his weaknesses until they turned to his favour. He hung each of his lies from a flag, and set each of those flags firmly into the soil of his properties, like an empty canon on display. Nothing with Dominic was ever as it seemed. Probably, his real name was Steven Stevens and
Dominic Kingsling
was the alias.