Blood Dark (25 page)

She grabbed his arm as he moved to step away. ‘Matt, if there’s something I should know …’

He glanced around the car park again as if worried about someone overhearing. ‘I’m just telling you that you
can
get back to how things were. That this will all blow over. Don’t let him spoil it for you. Don’t let him rip opportunities away from you; everything you have worked for. You can have a life away from Malloy. You can free yourself from whatever he has over you.’ He pressed his lips together as he hesitated. ‘And because I probably won’t have the courage to say it to your face again, I want you to know now that you
do
have other options. Someone who won’t mess you around. Someone who won’t hurt you.’ He paused. His gaze lingered. ‘I’ll call you later.’ He brushed her hair from her cheek once more, and placed another kiss on her cheek. ‘Get some rest.’

Caitlin stood in the empty chill of the concrete tomb, alone amongst the lifeless vehicles as she watched Morgan walk away.

She watched him disappear through the door into the stairwell.

She watched the door slam shut behind him.

She reached into her jacket pocket for her phone.

Kane still hadn’t tried to call.

K
ane watched
from the recess across the street, his cupped hand shielding the amber glow of his cigarette as he held it by his side.

He exhaled an unsteady stream of smoke as she stepped into her car, as she sat there in the passing minutes between the shadows and the glow of the overhead florescent lights.

His heart pounded at an almost-human rate and, for once, he felt he had no control over it – just as he had no control over the pain that had embedded deep inside him.

The kiss had lacerated through him like lightning, leaving a blazing path in its wake that still burned long after Morgan had gone. The heat of possessiveness soared through his veins at the recollection of Morgan’s lips against Caitlin’s. That she had shared something so intimate as that – something he knew was an immense thing to Caitlin – with another male.

That Caitlin could have wanted Morgan more than she wanted him.

Whether it was their first kiss or one of many, he had no way to know. Either way, the pain was no different. The betrayal had been in front of his eyes. Betrayal with the boss who shared her case, who had time with her in her office; the good guy, the hero, the one who had taken her back to the VCU. The one with his pleasant Midtown life and his family and his opportunities. The one who could give Caitlin everything she needed amidst his own neglect of her. Maybe even everything she wanted when he himself, in turn, could offer her so little.

It was a rare feeling but one he recognised. The feeling that coiled through his chest was that sense of self-pity. A sense he abhorred. A pathetic sense reserved for those willing to brood instead of act.

This was his punishment for keeping her at arm’s length.

Or this was his punishment for trusting her in the first place. Because right then the woman in the car felt like a stranger.

A stranger who, right then, he couldn’t believe hadn’t shared all she had suspected with Morgan.

As Caitlin ignited her engine to life, reversed and drove into the gated opening, he stepped back into the darkness. He cast his cigarette into the puddle as he watched her take a right and pull up at the traffic lights.

Whatever was between them, whether real or not on her part, it was lost.

C
aitlin turned
off her engine and her lights, flooding herself with the unnerving quiet of her surroundings as she tuned in to the smatters of rain against her windscreen and roof. In the distance, the mist was encroaching on the dark buildings. Only one street lamp was working, the moon unable to assist through the dense storm clouds.

She scanned the emptiness of the backstreet before focusing on the shop on the corner. The rain didn’t account for the blackened glass of Tamara’s curiosity store though. Night was a prime selling time for any shop in Blackthorn, yet here there was no sign of life inside.

Caitlin knew she shouldn’t be there – the main reason for her remaining in the car for so long. But she needed to know the truth before she decided on her next course of action, especially as she believed his warning over the implications of disclosure. Just as she believed the second she revealed the leads to Morgan, the snowball would be unstoppable.

So first she’d find the truth from Tamara. She
would
find out what happened with Bea.

Stepping out of the car, she crossed the street, the chill in the air and the cold rain smattering against her shirt.

Caitlin stepped up to the door nestled between two bay windows, both reinforced by iron bars. The blind was down over the door, the ‘closed’ sign displayed. She rapped her knuckles on the glass.

And waited.

After a few seconds, she took enough steps back to examine the windows above.

Nothing stirred.

She stepped back into the alcove and rapped her knuckles against the glass twice and then in a louder succession.

With silence remaining persistent, Caitlin backed up onto the street again, checking over both shoulders that she hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention.

She rubbed her fingers across her cold lips as she kept her attention fixed on the windows above, looking for any sign of movement.

Nothing.

With another check over both shoulders, she headed around the corner of the building. The rusted balustrade sat parallel to the building, the sharp decline of the narrow stone steps descending to the basement.

With another wary glance around, Caitlin cautiously headed down.

She tapped on the door, and it instantly opened of its own accord. Unleashing her gun from its holster, she stepped into the catacomb of a hallway before finding herself in a larger living space.

The aroma of a well-used open fire lingered in the air, the sense of warmth exacerbated by the large sunken sofas, the array of opulent fabrics draped over walls and furniture in the cluttered but homely room.

Candlelight flickered in the hallway beyond, reassuring Caitlin that at least someone was home.

‘Hello?’ Caitlin called out as she edged forward, knowing she was already bang out of order entering the property without just cause. ‘VCU.’

Silence echoed back.

‘Tamara?’ she called out again.

She directed her gun down the narrow doglegged staircase that veered down to yet another level.

‘Tamara, there is no need to be alarmed but I am armed. Please show yourself.’

Met with nothing but darkness and silence looming back from the pit of the house she made her way further down the hallway.

The source of light was revealed in the chunky candle that nestled in its wall sconce ahead to her right, the wax tide cascading down what was left of its cylindrical body. The solid mess on the floor beneath betrayed that then, or at some point previously, it had been left burning for hours, if not a day at least.

She persisted onwards through the amalgamation of flickering amber light and shadows caught in their own private battle. Five feet ahead, outside an open door to her left, another candle sat in a molten mass in its own sconce, this one having burned down to defunctness. Another flicker of amber light echoed back from within the room.

‘Hello?’ Caitlin called out again. ‘Tamara?’

Composing herself, casting another wary glance over her shoulder, she reached the threshold.

She stopped breathing.

She remained rooted to the spot.

The woman lay naked and supine on the bed, her face turned to the ceiling, her arms strapped by her sides by ropes across her midriff.

Her arms were tipped with bloodsoaked bandages where her hands should have been. Both her feet jutted out at obscure angles, her ankles having been broken. Blood stained her neck, her swollen face, her mutilated chest, her bruised thighs.

‘Tamara?’ Caitlin said on a whisper.

The woman didn’t move.

Gun still poised, Caitlin kept her back to the wall as she crept into the room, as she warily scanned the shadows of its periphery. She crouched to tilt her head to check under the empty bed; she cautiously opened the wardrobe that sat behind her.

She placed her gun back in her holster to free both hands and fell to her knees at the bed to check for any sign of a pulse.

A second later, she felt a strong, masculine hand over her mouth.

She felt herself being lifted a foot off the ground, and torn three feet backwards from the edge of the bed.

‘
Y
ou’ve got
to be kidding,’ Kane had said as Arana had swept past him on her way down the hallway.

‘I’ll be back by dawn,’ his sister had called out over her shoulder.

‘You’ll be back right now!’

‘Sorry! Places to go. People to see. Parties to have.’

‘Arana!’ he’d said firmly. ‘Get your arse back here now!’

She’d sighed curtly and turned around, marching back up towards him.

He’d opened his mouth ready in full lecture mode only to have her sweep past him again.

‘Forgot my lipstick,’ she’d said, gliding back into her room.

He’d braced his arms on the doorway as Arana searched her dressing table, working her way through the clutter of trinkets and jewellery before finding what she wanted. She’d tucked it in her bag before heading back to the door where he’d blocked her way.

‘Arana, you cannot keep doing this.’

‘What? Enjoying myself? Or thinking my big brother is getting too old before his time?’

‘You cannot keep relying on announcing who you are to protect you. There are still some out there who don’t give a shit who I am.’

‘Like who? Come on, Kane, everyone in Blackthorn knows who you are and everybody adores you. If not, they’re too scared shitless to say.’

She’d moved to step past him but he’d kept his arms braced on the doorway.

She’d stepped back, folding hers with a sigh.

‘One day you’re going to mess with the wrong vampires, or lycans, or you’re going to run into a gang of cons …’ he’d warned her.

‘Or I could just be out there having a good time instead of sitting on high alert waiting for this so-called Tryan to rise.’ She’d closed the gap between them. ‘You don’t even know if the Tryan is due to rise here in this Blackthorn. Or what if the symbol had been misread? What if you playing sheriff is just one big waste of time?’

‘I’m doing my job.’

‘Your job is to be out there making some gorgeous female very happy in the back of some steamy club and renewing her will to live in these shitty times. Erica’s got her eye on you, you know.’ She’d pushed herself up onto tiptoes to cup his face and pecked him gently on the cheek. ‘I love you, Kane, but you take things a little too seriously sometimes. You have brought me up to know how to look after myself and I’ve done a damn good job so far. And as well as playing sheriff, your job is just as much about showing our kind that they might be trapped in these walls, but it doesn’t mean they have to feel trapped on the inside. Now, how about you let your little sister go and find someone fun to play with and I promise to break his balls swiftly and efficiently if he steps out of line.’ She’d held his jaw. ‘No one will touch me, Kane. I don’t think anyone would dare reap the aftermath.’

The following day, Kane had been led to her body lying alone on the cold, rough concrete in the warehouse, her heart torn from her body.

And now there was Tamara.

His friend. His loyal friend: something he couldn’t afford to have for the very reason that now lay in front of him.

All he could hear was the palpitations of Caitlin’s heart as he held her tight in his arms, his hand muffling her protests, his grip amidst his shock, his horror, no doubt stifling her.

He’d known something was wrong the minute he’d surveyed the darkened building. There was always a glow beyond the shop windows at night. In the twenty years he’d known Tamara, ever since she’d been ousted from Midtown when she’d be found to be selling illegal herb concoctions – medicinal illegal herb concoctions – she’d kept that business going.

Back then, he’d sauntered in out of curiosity; he’d had come across a couple of cons cornering her at the counter, getting heavy-handed quickly.

She’d been a twenty-year-old with fight in her eyes but without the physical prowess to match. He made up for the latter that night and the cons never touched her again. No one ever touched her again.

Until then.

With logic sensing a trap, he’d been wary about entering. But he’d been even more wary about Caitlin’s purpose for being there – why she had any business going to Tamara at all. He’d never even spoken of her and that in itself evoked his curiosity to painful levels. More worrying had been the darkness echoing back at him from within.

The moment he’d entered the building and picked up on the metallic scent, nothing had been able to stop him ploughing towards the source, the lingering sense of betrayal replaced with gut-wrenching dread of what he was going to find.

Never had he been more grateful to hear Caitlin’s pulse, to feel her heart beat, to feel her ragged breaths against the palm of his hand.

But Caitlin’s wasn’t the only pulse he detected.

Kane slipped the gun from Caitlin’s holster and tucked it into the back of his jeans before he released her, before he dropped to Tamara’s side.

He gently cupped Tamara’s face as she forced her non-swollen eye open, mascara masking her cheeks almost as much as the blood.

But it was only as she opened her mouth to speak to him, that he saw the even greater extent of the cruelty – that her tongue, like her hands, had been removed.

They’d made sure she couldn’t run. They’d made sure she couldn’t tell anyone what had happened to her. But they’d ensured by bandaging the worst of her wounds that she wouldn’t bleed out too quickly. They’d intended on keeping her alive for as long as possible so she would lay there contemplating her death, immersed in recollections of whatever had happened to her in the last hours of her life.

And as he looked down at the nature of the wounds, whoever was responsible had intended far greater than just the physical damage.

His chest burned. With hands trembling with fury, he unknotted the rope from the bedframe, loosening its bind around her waist. He reached for the nearest throw and lay it over her to grant her whatever bit of dignity he could. He gently stroked her cold cheek with his hand.

‘Bea,’ she said, the pronunciation managed despite the lack of her tongue.

His spine may as well have been ripped through his back.

In Tamara’s eye there was no accusation, just relief that he knew what she meant.

He knew
exactly
what she meant.

Those things that had been inflicted on her had been inflicted because of
him
. Those horrific things had happened to garner information from her.

Bea had reported him. Bea had to have mentioned the book he had gone to collect. Somehow word had got back to Sirius. Sirius who was watching
everything
.

He lowered his head, battling the inner demons that raged, that inflamed him to do an about turn, to descend on the TSCD and rip it apart, to free Caleb, to allow him to incite his rage.

To just let it all burn.

He’d use what he already had. He’d give Sirius the war he wanted. He’d let Caleb become what that prophecy dictated.

But he’d worked too hard for it. He’d waited too long for it. They all had. If he went after them now, he’d win nothing. It would change
nothing
. Arana, Tamara and Rone would have died for
nothing
.

It would fuel his determination to fight. He would let it be his ammunition. He would bring the fuckers down with Jask just like he had promised.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, rubbing his thumb along her cheek as he shook his head. ‘Tamara, I’m so sorry.’

She gave a nod before her face scrunched up in the agony of the recollection. Then she shook her head in response, a trail of her own tears making paths through the dried blood down to her ears.

‘Does he know?’

She shook her head.

Tears hazed his eyes at what she had endured yet had still remained silent, belligerent, loyal. His constricted throat clogged.

‘You always were a stubborn one, Wilkes,’ he said as he brushed her matted hair back from her forehead, behind her ear.

And his fingertips brushed paper.

He removed the small scroll rolled up like a cigarette.

He uncoiled it:
You fucked with my girl, now I’ve fucked with yours.

And there was a heart – a mocking, hand-drawn heart – next to it.

For the second time that night, his heart pounded to a human rate.

Because he knew the writing.

Beyond the clues in the message itself, he recognised the handwriting. He could recall it from the cards he’d seen in Caitlin’s apartment that night he’d broken in. As he lifted the paper slightly to his nose, the rancid scent, though weak, was confirmation enough.

Rob Doyle.

Rob who was supposed to have put behind bars … who was supposed to be locked up serving his time with the other two who had been party to murdering Arana.

And this was confirmation of his deepest fear: that justice hadn’t been served.

The chill engulfed him, a paradox to the blood burning through his veins.

His insides coiled into a knot of rage.

He looked over his shoulder at where Caitlin remained behind him. Tears swamped her eyes – whether from shock and horror at the sight before her, or fear. Right then, he didn’t know which. He’d show her the piece of paper soon enough. He’d see the look in her eyes when she read it – when she read the message from
her
ex.

‘You don’t even know if they’re locked away,’ Jask had said. ‘You don’t even know if it was just a publicity stunt to save their lives. They could be hauled up in some fancy apartment in Summerton waiting our demise.’

He
needed
to see it. He needed to see shock. He needed to know she knew nothing about Rob being out.

But right then, he refused to make that his main focus.

Kane returned his attention to Tamara, her breathing laboured – breaths that would most likely remain laboured for hours. Rob had seen to that. Just as he had seen to it that there was no coming back from the damage that had been inflicted on her. If she would even want to come back from it.

The resoluteness in the way she looked at him tore his heart wide open.

She gave a small nod, the plea in her eyes unmistakable amidst the pain that was no doubt coursing through every nerve.

He leaned over her. ‘I’ll get him,’ he whispered, something he had never been able to say to Arana. ‘I promise.’

He kissed her on the forehead again, her attempt at a smile ratcheting the pain to unbearable levels in his chest.

He reached for the pillow.

He’d give her that one iota of power – the only thing he could give her.

He held the pillow down over her face.

‘No!’ Caitlin lunged forward.

But Kane held up his hand, a hand that turned into a pointed finger in a silent but stern warning for her to stay away.

He knew it must have said enough because she took a step back.

He returned his attention to Tamara.

Kane held her still, comforting her in the only way he could. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes as he felt the last of her weak fight beneath him, his tears dampening the pillow that formed a barrier between them.

After the seconds had passed, after her body had completely stilled, he moved the pillow away.

He lifted the throw over her head.

He sat for a moment, his hands braced on his knees, his head lowered.

A split-second later, he stepped up to the wall opposite and punched his fist clean through the plasterboard.

And turned to face Caitlin.