Blood Dark (34 page)

T
here were
at least forty reports over a fifty-year time span.

Caitlin spread out all of the pieces of paper; papers whose hues varied in colour: the dated ones more yellowed and dog-eared than the newer.

Tears blurred her eyes, her hands numb as she turned the pages on the teenage girl’s account dating back to over thirty years before. Her father had been an agent, assigned to Kane. According to the report, Kane had warned the agent to stay out of his business. He’d refused. The girl, only eighteen at the time, had been found three weeks later after a passer-by had seen her fingers clawing through the slats in an abandoned house in Blackthorn, her screams having reduced to nothing more than raspy, pitiful sobs. The girl had needed external and internal surgery that she’d never fully recover from. The psychological damage had been worse. With Kane on the loose and with her having two younger sisters, her father hadn’t been willing to take the risk. He’d left the VCU. He’d shared the account on the grounds it remained confidential for the sake of his daughter’s dignity, and that the entire family were subsequently transferred to another locale. Their names had been changed to prevent them ever being traced.

A sense of disassociation made her feel as if she was looking over someone else’s shoulder whilst reading account after account of similar tales. Each of the victims was a female counterpart of the male Kane had a vendetta against – whether a daughter, wife, sister, girlfriend. Some spoke of Kane charming them for days or weeks before. Some spoke of him taking them straight off the street or out of their homes. The one thing they all had in common though was that none of the women came out of it the way they had been before. The question remained as to whether those that had survived truly were the lucky ones.

Xavier’s words echoed in the back of her mind:
‘He’s done some damnable things, Cailtin. Some of the worst crimes I’ve ever come across. Sadistic. Cruel. Twisted.’

Max came through even louder, clearer:
‘Too many people have been reeled in by him, Caitlin. Behind those looks and that charm he is dangerous and he is vicious and he will do whatever it takes to get what he wants.’

She reached for the report from only nine years before, this one from the wife of another agent. She was young, attractive, and top of her career in financing. Bile formed in the back of her throat as the woman’s statement echoed her own. She’d been taken off the street after visiting her husband at the VCU. She’d been drugged and trapped in a small apartment-type place. Kane had fed her, clothed her. They’d had sex – countless times. In her account, she’d fervently denied any kind of coercion or being forced, but the medical reports that accompanied it, along with the more in-depth psychological reports, spoke of a very different tale. Despite extensive counselling, the young woman had continued to dismiss the bruises as foreplay and the internal damage as something she’d been willing to endure. Caitlin wiped tears from her cheeks as the reports further showed the young woman had been a few weeks pregnant with her first child before she’d been taken in by Kane. She wasn’t pregnant when she came back out. She’d said in her account that it was for the best. She no longer loved her husband anyway. Kane was the love of her life. She’d taken an overdose and killed herself three weeks later.

Caitlin cupped her trembling hands over her face. A shudder quaked through her.

‘I’ve seen enough females first-hand who thought it would be a challenge to slip between his sheets,’
Rob had said, back in her apartment that night.
‘You don’t come out the same person. He’s sick. He’s twisted. He doesn’t have limits. And you will end up doing whatever he wants you to do. And he’ll get so far in your head, you’ll actually believe you want it.’

Pushing back her chair, Caitlin swept her arm across the desk. The papers floated around her like a slow-motion paper storm, the computer mouse, hanging by its wire, clacked against the desk leg like a ticking time bomb.

She braced her arms on the surface, forcing herself to take deep breaths. But breathing suddenly felt like an alien sensation. The sense of being sullied crept over and through her like the soul ripper’s tendrils had.

She tried to remember; she tried to recall all the facts of what had
actually
happened between her and Kane. But recollecting was like reaching for an object at the bottom of a pool while being wrapped in plastic sheet. She was suffocating under the pressure of it, everything too opaque as she tried to see the truth from the lies as she fought her own wall of self-defense against the horrifying truth of the vampire she loved.

Deeply loved with every breath of her body.

Breath that was now being pummeled out of her.

She trampled over strewn pieces of paper as she fought through the tiny space towards the door. She walked into the corner of her desk in her plight but barely felt the pain. She stumbled out into the corridor, the stretch of it swaying, the voices at the far end like underwater echoes. She used the walls to help keep her upright, the high-pitched whistling in her ears overwhelming every other sense. A coldness had set deep in her bones despite her palms feeling wet as she pushed them against the toilet door.

She shoved open the first cubicle and fell to her knees. She vomited into the toilet bowl until she had nothing left to heave up.

Like a repressed dream, it flashed in front of her eyes. The sword she’d seen on Caleb’s symbol had matched the one on Kane’s back. She knew she’d recognised it. She’d known the hilt was familiar. Caleb was the regal orb and Kane the sword – both entwined within Blackthorn.

There was meaning behind it – there had to be.

The shadow beside Caleb in the vision – it was Kane. He had been by his side, watching over him.

That
was why Kane hadn’t wanted to be read.

Kane wasn’t Caleb’s enemy; he was his
protector
.

She’d
helped them get Leila out. And once she’d closed the dimension, it would render her defunct.

And now they were in the process of freeing their leader.

Clutching her aching chest, her heart pounding against her clenched hand, her throat scorched dry, she choked on her tears as she gasped for breath, her whole body trembling, her weak legs lax against the cubicle wall opposite. She sobbed until her eyes burned, until her breathing eased, until she cared enough to wipe her nose and the saliva from her mouth. She drew her knees to her chest, rested her head on them, wrapped herself up in her own arms.

Because that monster she had finally turned to face had slammed his fist clean into her chest and torn out her heart. Ironically when her life had finally stretched out before her again, she felt dead on the inside.

‘Caitlin?’

Meghan stood in the open doorway of the cubicle, her eyes wide and troubled as she crouched beside her. She gently rested her hand on Caitlin’s upper arm. ‘Shit, Caitlin, are you okay?’

Too numb to care what state Meghan saw her in, Caitlin gave a small nod – one more out of acknowledgement than truth.

‘I heard about Max,’ Meghan said, her voice soft. ‘I’m
so
sorry.’

Caitlin forced herself to her feet. She wiped her tender eyes and tingling cheeks as she brushed past Meghan on her way across to the sink. She gulped water from the tap, spitting it out and hoping the lingering bitter taste would leave with it.

Clutching the edge of the basin, she took a swift look at herself – at the tired, worn thirty-year-old that had spent seven years fighting for survival to be left with nothing.

Worse, her survival had achieved nothing but to fuel Sirius’s diabolical plan, to endanger thousands, to have been used by Kane to ensure the vampire uprising stood the best chance of coming into fruition.

‘No one wants you here, Parish. So why don’t you go and shuffle your papers like some good little secretary and leave the real work to the men who know how to give it to the vampires, not roll over and take it.’

‘I get it,’ Meghan said. ‘The guilt’s a killer, isn’t it?’

Meghan may as well have drawn back the sword and impaled her on it.

Meghan stepped alongside her. ‘But you mustn’t let it consume you.’ She leaned back against the neighbouring sink with a heavy sigh and folded her arms. ‘I swear, I’m going to bring that bastard in.’ She was met with furrowed blue eyes. ‘This has to stop, Caitlin. It
has
to.’

The knock on the door was the only thing to break the silence, Morgan peering around it a second later.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Meghan said, rubbing Caitlin lightly on the arm again before exiting.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said the second they were alone. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper. I’m sorry you had to read all of that. I didn’t know how else to get you to understand.’

She clutched the sink behind her. ‘How long have you known all of this?’

He sighed with unease. ‘A week maybe.’

‘You knew even before I came back?’

He dropped his gaze.

‘You should have shown me sooner, Matt.’ She stood upright and took a step towards him. ‘We could have stopped all of this. I could have …’

Not put herself in the situation she had. She could have done her job. She could have kept Leila in. She could have prevented Feinith intervening.

She could have stopped herself falling even deeper for Kane and saving all the self-inflicted pain.

She exhaled tersely before turning her back on him. She walked away. She stopped. She clutched her face in her hands.

She turned to face him again. ‘You
should
have told me,’ she said as she stabbed her finger towards the floor. ‘If we were friends, you
would
have told me.’

‘I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if you were still involved with him, what you might say to him. My girls, Caitlin. If anything happened to my girls …’ He cupped his mouth, fighting back the distress in his own eyes before he met her gaze again. He lowered his hand and took a steady breath. ‘Since taking on this job, I have someone monitor my babies twenty-four hours a day. The second I read those reports …’

The guilt stabbed hard at the distress in his eyes.

She put her arms around him a second later as they accepted each other’s hugs.

It felt warm, it felt safe … it felt easy.

She wanted to tell him everything would be okay. She wanted to tell him, as she would have done only a day before, that Kane would
never
be capable of that. But the truth was, she no longer knew. She no longer knew what he was capable of.

She couldn’t know Kane because she didn’t even know herself anymore.

But she knew what she had to do.

C
aitlin stood
to face the aftermath, Morgan tight behind her as he closed her office door.

She’d clear up the papers and then she’d find a cardboard box from somewhere. She’d load it with her belongings: a few notebooks, her pens, the stapler she’d had since she was a kid. Then there were a couple of her coffee mugs. One had been bought for her in the secret santa a few years before. It had one word emblazoned on the side: Mug. It was supposed to be ironic, funny even. There had been a few sniggers as she’d opened it – and it wasn’t with the intention of laughing
with
her. She’d held it together until she’d had a timely excuse to go to the bathroom.

She should have smashed it to pieces but she’d kept it and had drunk out of it most days. Unbeknownst to them, it had become her secret chalice because every day she drank out of it was a reminder of another day she had survived the pressure to leave. It was a reminder that she had no intention, had never had any intention, of running away.

Until then.

Until the word mug had never seemed truer.

Rubbing the back of her hand across her nose, the heel of her hand against her red-raw eyes, Caitlin moved around to the far side of the desk.

Morgan started to help clear up the mess, until Caitlin signaled that she’d rather do it herself.

‘I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t leave, Caitlin,’ he said, taking the chair on the far side of the desk. ‘I won’t let you.’

‘And when word of this leaks out?’

‘It doesn’t have to. Feinith has someone in mind: a reoccurring offender who can take the drop for this one, who –’

Caitlin’s gaze snapped back to his as she rested her palms on the desk. ‘Are you
serious
?’

‘I have no choice. Resources are stretched. We have a whole other situation we are fighting out there. I had to come to some kind of agreement.’

She gathered the papers into a neat pile.

‘Caitlin, you’ve never run away before. You –’

‘It’s not about that, Matt.’

‘Then what?’

She placed her palms on the desk again, this time for support. ‘It’s about my self-respect. It’s about the fact I compromised. It’s about the fact I fucked up.’

‘And no one needs to know.’ He shuffled to the end of his seat. ‘I told you, we have it covered.’

She exhaled tersely. ‘Just like Xavier had it covered last time? Max, Rob, my father? For years I wanted to be him, Matt,’ she said, surprisingly herself as the tears welled up again. She bit them back. ‘Now I don’t want to be anything like him.’ She grabbed a few more pieces of paper.

‘And what about Kane?’

Just hearing his name mentioned caused her throat to tighten. ‘What about Kane?’ she said dismissively.

‘We need to talk about protecting you.’

She exhaled tersely again.

Because she’d handle Kane. She’d deal with Kane. This had become
far
more personal.

Even more than the situation with the soul ripper, she now truly had absolutely nothing to lose.

Before then, she had to tell Morgan about Caleb. She had to do whatever she could to stop them releasing him. If she could only find where to start …

She gathered up the papers on her desk before lifting the mouse still hanging from its chord back to its place on her desk.

The motion reignited the screen.

She reached for the two rogue sheets of paper that rested against the screen, their transparency now ignited.

She stilled.

She felt as though someone had placed a hook on the back of her shirt and was yanking her backwards through an endless tunnel.

‘I know you feel bad right now, but it’s not your fault,’ Morgan said. ‘He’s clever, Caitlin. Manipulative. He pretends to be your friend, plays on your vulnerabilities, makes you think he cares. But he’s all about revenge. That’s all he’s about. I’m just glad you see it now.’

The pressure of a time bomb on the verge of exploding pressed down on her. Because never had a truer word been spoken.

She removed the two pieces of paper from the screen, her hand trembling at the shadowy truth that had shone through.

She looked back across at her mug – the three letters starring cruelly back at her.

Her gaze snapped back to Morgan.

‘Me too,’ she said, the deadness inside taking its first lightning bolt of renewal, her heart jolting back to life. It took her a few moments to say it, her mind racing ahead at a rate of knots. ‘I can trust you, Matt, can’t I?’

His frown deepened. ‘Of course you can.’

‘I mean it, Matt. I need to know. I need to know I have one person in my life that I can trust.’

He frowned. ‘Caitlin, you know I’m there for you.’

She licked the outer-side of her front teeth, surprised at how dry her mouth was. She took a steady breath. She uttered the words she never thought she’d hear herself say. ‘I want you to help me catch Kane.’

‘
What
?’

‘Just me and you,’ she said. ‘That’s why I have to know I can trust you. I need to end this, Matt. We
have
to bring this to an end.’

‘You want to bring him in?’

‘No. No, I can’t.’

He frowned again. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘There are things going on, Matt. Things I can’t even begin to explain right now. But the corruption I exposed here is just a fraction. It runs deep into the depths of this locale’s management. Our Global Representative, Sirius Throme, has plans, dangerous plans that he has exposed to me. If he has his way, it’s going to affect everything we know. He wants Kane and, if he gets his hands on him, the consequences are going to be dire. Kane knows things that Sirius wants to know. That’s why there’s been a no-kill policy on him. That’s how Kane got released that day I brought him in despite all the evidence, despite him shooting you, despite everything. Sirius let him go because he needed to. Now I have to make sure he doesn’t get him but, at the same time, we
have
to know what Kane is planning. I’m asking you to help me.’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘I can arrange to meet with Kane. I can pick somewhere where his defenses will be down, somewhere with plenty of escape routes so he doesn’t bring an army of backup. We need to sedate him and take him somewhere. Somewhere no one will find him.’

‘And then what?’

‘I shadow read him. We find out the truth once and for all.’

He slumped back in his chair.

‘You said it yourself, Matt: we won’t know what he’s going to do until he does it. I say we get ahead of that. I say we stop him dead in his tracks.’ She moved around the table to kneel on the floor in front of him. ‘But it has to be just us. It is so important we keep this to ourselves. If there is anyone else there, even a hint, he
will
know and we will lose him for good. Any sign of a set-up and I’ll never get close to him again; we’ll never get this chance again. He’ll be gone.’

‘Caitlin, I don’t know. It’s one hell of a risk.’

‘He won’t see it coming, I swear. Please. Do it for me. This is my bow out. Let me end it this way. After all these years, all this work, don’t let it all flitter away. I can do this. You know I can do this. I
need
to do this. I took this job on to protect this locale and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m asking you one last time to trust me.’

‘But if you can get close to him, can’t you take him out without me? Aren’t you better off raising no suspicion at all?’

‘I can’t get near him armed with anything. I need someone else.’

Morgan leaned forward, rested his elbows resting on his knees, his head in his hands. He let his arms drop lax onto his thighs as he looked back at her. ‘I don’t know.’

She reached forward and grabbed his hands. ‘We could be saving hundreds, if not thousands, of lives. We can do it between us: partners again. Me and you, Matt.’

He stared down at the floor and then looked back at her. ‘Tell me your plan first. In full.’