Blood Dark (27 page)

C
aitlin’s gaze dropped
. The colour drained from her already pale complexion. Her jaw was clenched, her body trembling.

This was no act – this was distress about more than her knowing she was cornered, beyond her having worked out that he wasn’t letting her go again. This was distress about more than a guilty mind, of someone who had played him and was now caught.

More troublingly, she should have relished in calling him a monster, in further enforcing her despise of him. Thinking he was a monster shouldn’t have led to her having to hold back tears.

It proved it made a difference to her what she thought of him. And whatever she thought of him right now, it was bad – a whole other kind of bad.

He frowned. ‘What is it you think I did to her?’

‘Why don’t
you
tell me what you did?’

‘Bea was a walking bite-fest waiting to happen,’ he said, resenting his need to justify anything, ‘or, worse, con bait. She was out of her depth. My advice would have fallen on deaf ears, so I gave her a reality check instead. It was the only thing that was going to save her life.’

‘Threatening her? Cutting her?
Raping
her?’

He could home in on only one word, the lie slicing through his chest, the sheer distaste of the accusation sickening him to his core. ‘
Raped
her? That
kid
?
That’s
what she said?’ But the false accusation wasn’t the cause of the pain in his chest; he’d faced enough of them across the decades. He had to acknowledge that wasn’t what hurt. ‘That’s what you
believe
me capable of?’

‘According to the timings, it happened not long after I’d woken in your den. Do you remember that? I do. I remember exactly how you were with me on that bed.’

Whatever Caitlin had been told, she’d soaked it up, and it lacerated his heart more than he was comfortable to allow.

‘Oh, that’s right,’ he said. ‘When I barely even touched you. When
I
pulled back.’

‘Because you had to. Because you
needed
me. Did letting steam off with her make it easier to behave yourself around me?’

The insult incited a spark of anger.

Never could even he have predicted the consequence of just one fleeting act all those days ago: where he had been driven by as much irritation at the young girl’s ignorance as that innate sense to do something about it. And it had come back to bite him at the worst time.

He closed the gap between them.

Her eyes flared at his proximity, her pulse picking up a notch – a pulse he could hear in the silence as distinctly as he could hear her breathing.

‘Whatever that girl told you,’ he said, ‘I’m telling you the worst I did was feed and cut her. Okay, so it was far from chivalrous but I’m fucking sick of girls like her clinging onto some the dark romantic fantasy and making a mockery of the system we are forced to live in whilst they have the luxury of treating Blackthorn like a playground or fairground ride. She was on a downward spiral she couldn’t even see, starting by trying to come on to me. I probably saved her life. And now Tamara is dead because of it.’

Her glossy eyes compelled him to reach out to her but he’d resolved – he’d
promised
himself – the second he’d felt the pain in his chest as he’d seen Morgan kiss her, the line had to finally be drawn.

Blackthorn
had
to come first, and his feelings for her right then were the greatest risk to Blackthorn’s future.

‘I’ll ask you
once
more: did you know Rob was out?’

He heard the breath snag at the back of her throat. He felt the reproach like a cool breeze, the hairs on his forearms standing on end as her eyes brimmed with indignation.

‘You
seriously
believe that?’ she asked. ‘After all I just said?’

He wanted to believe her. His deepest instincts were to believe her. No matter how much suspicion flooded his veins at the prospect of her having deceived him for all that time, maybe since the beginning; no matter how raw seeing her kiss Morgan still felt; no matter how incensed he felt that she may have known about Rob being free, those instincts continued to berate him.

‘You think I assaulted that girl. It looks like our opinions of each other are just stellar.’

‘I knew
nothing
about Rob,’ she said, meeting his gaze square-on. ‘It makes me feel physically sick to know that he is out. I kissed Morgan because I was a mess, because I needed to be held. Because I’ve never felt lonelier in my entire life than I did when I believed that I no longer knew you – and I can assure you I’ve had some pretty fucking lonely nights over the years as a basis for comparison.

‘You asked me who I am; well, I know what I’m not. I’m not the one hiding anything. I came back to you as
me
. I’ve been with you as
me
. I’m talking to you now as
me
. Believe me or don’t believe me, Caleb is still inside. And if you’re thinking of using me as leverage to get him out, you’ll only flag up just how important he is to you. And you need to know I mean nothing to them, just as I know I mean nothing to you. So that’s it, Kane. I’m defunct. What are you going to do now?’

H
e’d made
her strip down in the tunnels, leaving everything behind in place of the sweatshirt he’d taken from Tamara’s wardrobe. He’d run his fingers through her hair and behind her ears checking for any sign that she’d been bugged. But Kane’s over-caution about being traced, despite being unforgiveable, finally made sense.

The last time she’d been in the corridor, she’d been carried there by one of Jask’s pack – presented to their leader like some kind of trespasser.

The last time she’d been in the outer room, she’d barely been able to stand, her foot ripped with glass and her heart ripped with pain as Jask had disclosed the truth of what her family had done.

She’d never got further than that room, but now Caitlin walked alongside Kane as they passed through the gates, past the barbed-wire-topped chainlink fences, through a tunnel and out into the quadrant beyond.

Unease tightened further in her chest as she surveyed the grave-sized molehills standing out amidst the damp grass ahead.

‘What’s that about?’ she asked, despite not knowing if she’d be graced with a response.

‘Sirius broke into the compound the morning you came to inform me about his threat. He killed thirty. He burned down their greenhouse and their supplies with it.’

Her gut wrenched as she surveyed the fresh mounds, some no bigger than the size of a small child. Her gaze snapped back to Kane. ‘
Why
?’

Kane kept his gaze ahead as he led the way across the quadrant towards the tunnel to the right. ‘Because if the lycans turn, Sirius has yet another excuse to invade.’

Queasiness added to her already light-headedness. She looked over her shoulder to where Jask was heading down the broad stone steps of the once grand hotel, a female by his side.

As Caitlin locked gazes with her from a distance, though her hair had been cut to chin length and looked like it had the remains of black dye working its way out of it, she recognised her instantly from the photograph: Sophia.

Alliance member Sophia
in
the compound.

And following behind Sophia, stopping three steps down, was another face that she recognised.

Her breath snagged in her throat.

Like Alice landing in Wonderland, or Lucy burrowing through coats to find a whole other world beyond, she felt like she’d stepped into her own surreal Narnia – some parallel existence carrying on without her.

Eden Reece descended the last of the three steps behind Jask. Eden Reece who didn’t reflect the same shock at seeing her in his midst. More worryingly, he didn’t show
any
sign of alarm at being spotted by one of his colleagues.

Emerging through the tunnel on the other side, Caitlin looked across at the remnants of the burned-out greenhouse. Smatters of rain hit the paving slabs around them, catching on the branches on the oak tree as she surveyed the devastation. It was all the evidence she needed to back Kane’s claim. Together with the horror of the graves and seeing Tamara’s mutilated body on the bed, it curbed her anger at his deceit and replaced it with the deepest sense of foreboding she had ever felt.

She looked across at him, at the steadiness in his gaze as they headed towards the single-storey stone outbuilding, the brickwork masked with lifeless vines that echoed what was now seemingly dead between them.

But it wasn’t dead for her. As much as she then wanted it to be, as much as she needed it to be for her own self-preservation, she knew a part of her queasiness was because she still cared.

Whatever had been happening those last few days, the impact had never been more apparent than when Kane had driven his fist clean through the wall. His act of rage had distressed her not out of fear, but out of the overwhelming need, yet inability, to comfort him. Because more significantly than their relationship being broken, she’d seen in that moment that Kane himself was close to breaking. Whatever was happening, Sirius was starting to win.

The thought of the devil and the deep blue sea spiraled her into the darkest depths of her own vacillation.

Pushing through the front door, Kane led her to the room to the left of a handful of steps, the latter leading down into a shadowed corridor.

He indicated for her to take a chair at the six-seater table, the sole furniture in the empty room.

She did so, keeping her back to the wall, the door directly ahead.

‘I’ll be back in ten,’ he said. ‘Wait here.’

S
irius Throme stood
at the smear-free floor-to-ceiling glass window, casting his gaze across the hills towards the lake that glinted in the moonlight. He’d had a hearty stroll that afternoon and could still feel the benefits circulating in his seventy-year-old lungs, his health mirroring that of someone twenty years his junior.

The regular transfusions of Higher Order vampire blood had helped, of course – just tiny amounts, enough to ward off the ailments that aging naturally would have inevitably brought with it. Until the longevity tests had finished being conducted on the angel blood, proceeding with caution was the only sensible option. In time he planned that not even that would be a necessity for the elite – those who could replace cloned body after cloned body when soul transference became as routine as a medical health check.

Then the angel blood would become a carrot available for the high achievers, for accomplishments that deemed them worthy.

As for angel tears, the physical advantage they created would remain useful, specifically for the army that would rule the new locales under martial law. The army would be infallible. There would be no threat of uprising then. They would wipe out all third species except for the angels. And finally it would become a peaceful world, an ordered world, a renewed world.

‘You believe we have cause for concern?’ Cameron said from behind him, recapturing his attention.

‘I believe we have
abject
cause for concern,’ Sirius stated, turning to face the vice-head of the Global Council, their mutual advisor sat opposite him.

Cameron and Hill exchanged glances.

‘I’m not saying we mount a strike yet,’ Sirius added. ‘Goodness knows none of us want that. I am merely asking that we conduct a vote as soon as possible so that should the need arise, we will not have to waste time doing this then.’

‘You’re asking for permission to move into position – to vote on a pre-emptive course of action while we still have no idea of the level of strike that will be required. You’re asking us to give the nod now for something that could turn into a mass slaughter,’ Cameron remarked. ‘There are still humans residing in Blackthorn, let alone Lowtown.’

‘Which is why we cannot be lax in having some form of response,’ Sirius said, not even bothering to conceal his edge of impatience. ‘You have seen the photographs of the drawings agents in the south side of Blackthorn found. If they are a correct representation, then whatever is happening with the fourth species in that district right now could be a sign that the prophecy is coming into fruition. My combat unit is ready. I am merely asking that the council advocate immediate full military control of
my
locale to me. So, yes, I am asking that we move it to a vote. Tonight.’

Cameron rested his elbow on the table, his mouth in his hand as he stared down pensively.

Sirius let the silence linger for a moment.

He pulled out a chair to sit equidistant between both Global Council members.

‘I brought those photographs to the Global Council because I believed in their legitimacy,’ Sirius said. ‘I believed they were the proof we had been seeking, yet dreading: that the prophecy is real.
Very
real. Today, getting word of these fourth species attacks only validates it further. It cannot be a coincidence. We would be painfully naïve to believe that for one moment. And we would be painfully naïve, undeniably negligent, to sit back and not act to this warning. You talk about the risk to lives if we strike, but you know what the prophecy talks of as well as I do – you know the vampires will wreak global devastation. And they are destined to win. We have to listen to what one of their own is saying. We have to trust Feinith, the Higher Order, when they say they too are trying to prevent this. We are the only ones who can stop that. If not, then we are looking at thousands, if not tens of thousands, of human lives lost. The Global Council
has
to do something about it.

‘Was it not the very reason we were formed?’ Sirius added. ‘We knew if the time ever came that this wasn’t going to be an easy decision, but neither can we let ourselves be cornered. We either come out fighting or
their
ideals will rule. And you know what those ideals are, should this leader rise and succeed. We are talking about this very system we created to protect us being turned against us. We are talking about becoming slaves held in the cores as nothing more than their blood bags, their pleasure, their entertainment. Is that what you want, Cameron? Do you want your teenage daughters living in some impoverished back-alley hovel in Blackthorn, waiting for the next vampire to stroll into her home and take what he fancies?’

‘Like we inflict on some of our own now, you mean?’ Cameron asked, his eyes meeting and challenging Sirius square-on.

‘Nothing is perfect, Cameron. We are all aware of the flaws in the system. But look at the other side of it. Summerton and Midtown, to use this locale as just one example, are thriving. Those people who have earned the right no longer have to live in fear of murder, of assault, of theft, of abuse, of ignorance, of hate crimes. They live in peace and harmony, where they can walk the streets at night feeling safe, where mutual respect is in abundance just as they deserve. They can contribute to our great society without constantly looking over their shoulder in fear of someone taking what they have worked so hard for. The intellectually, physically, morally or artistically gifted are prospering in ways they never have before, and we must allow them to continue to be able to contribute.

‘This is no longer the time of the lazy, the indifferent, the ignorant, the aggressive, the selfish; those who believe they are entitled when they do
nothing
to earn it. Those who keep breeding and spawning their hatred in a self-perpetuating cycle of sucking resources dry and giving nothing back. Is that okay? I don’t think so. Humanity is no longer on the downward slide. Humanity is on the way up, and I am willing to fight to keep what we have worked so hard to achieve. And we are going to lose
all
of that if we do not act now.’

Sirius bit back the frustration flowing through his veins at Cameron’s persistent wavering.

‘These images of the fourth species are real,’ Sirius added, pressing his index finger down on the photographs he had laid in front of him. ‘And according to those photographs taken of the prophecy drawings on the south side of Blackthorn, it is destined to get worse. It could be within weeks, within days or within hours. These creatures know no boundaries. We are all under threat.
We
have a responsibility to contain the situation. I will not move my army in there unless I absolutely have to. I will not have the blood of a single innocent life on my hands unless it is utterly unavoidable. But I am asking for the Global Council’s backing. I am asking for their agreement. I am asking you to allow me to do this in the name of peace, of justice and of freedom; in the name of basic human rights. I am asking you to allow me to do what I need to do to prevent this devastation from happening.’

Cameron and Hall exchanged glances again.

Cameron eventually nodded, resting both palms on the table. ‘I’ll put out the summons,’ he said. ‘You can present your case.’

Cameron pushed back his chair and stood, exiting the room, shutting the soft-closing door behind him.

Sirius’s eyes met Hall’s.

‘You make an art form out of turning others’ misfortune to your benefit,’ she remarked.

‘I have no choice,’ he said. ‘It’s silent on the ground. Not one whisper of a retaliation being formed against my threat; not one iota of evidence. Nothing I can present to show the uprising.’

‘Because Kane is smart, Sirius. I warned you he would second-guess you. But I take it this course of action means you are close to detaining him?’

‘I have it on good advice that Caitlin is already doubting Malloy’s intentions. Between Bea’s excellent acting skills and Max’s timely demise, I’m giving it another twenty-four hours maximum. If we don’t get a result by then, I’m bringing her in.’

‘When you still remain unconvinced if Malloy feels anything for her at all? That’s a long-shot, Sirius, one hell of a risk.’

‘So was letting him go in the first place, but did it not prove effective? Are we not now on the cusp of the greatest leap humanity has ever taken?’

‘You’re still sailing close to the wind having done what you did to the lycans. You created a timescale we don’t need.’

‘And should the Global Council turn down my request, they’re the back-up plan we need. I’m not sitting around any longer, Jasmine. Besides, the invasion of the compound proved an effective training exercise. The unhesitant slaying of males, females
and
children has proven that each solider has been picked effectively. Rob has done me proud. They’re ready for action.’

‘But what about the envoi or Reece? Do you have any news on them? We
need
to know who that leader is, Sirius.’

‘I will find them.’

‘Really? I’m starting to wonder whether you’ve got a good a handle on this as you claim you have. I for one am getting to the point of needing more than just your assurances to keep investing my money to fund this project. And what if Malloy gets caught in this crossfire and it was all for nothing?’

‘Soul transference may be the master plan, but we still have the angels. Whether we get Malloy or not, we still have the prospect of becoming more powerful than we ever imagined. One way or another, this limbo will end and end soon. Either way, in the aftermath, we
will
have a new ideal. And it starts with you doing whatever you can do in there to help me secure the approval we need.’