Blood Shadows (30 page)

As the lycans left them alone, Jask stepped up to her. ‘If there wasn’t a no-touch policy on you, I’d tear you apart myself.’

‘What no-touch policy? Jask, what’s going on?’

Jask pressed his lips together as he glowered at her. ‘You really think those lycans were there by accident that night? Just happened to be on the wasteland out of sight where Arana happened to be wandering?’

‘Rumour was she arranged it.’

‘She despised lycans. She would never go near them let alone arrange to meet them for some sexual experiment. But it was a very convenient motive.’

‘Convenient for who?’

‘Who do you think?’

Caitlin frowned. ‘Are you saying they were set up?’

‘Selected because of their plausibility and their dubious background. Starved of their meds. Told they either went along with it or their families would pay the price. Families that would be protected if they gave themselves up after it. Lycans who were given sanctuary in the detainment unit if they spoke nothing of the truth. If they kept quiet until Kane was caught.’

Caitlin’s heart pounded.

‘They didn’t run into the containment unit with their tails between their legs, Caitlin. They had no choice.’

‘Why? Why would anyone set that up?’ Her gaze rested uneasily on Jask. Then dread flooded every nerve.

‘Xavier wanted Kane and he wanted Kane bad. What better way to send the most controlled vampire off on a self-destruct vengeance mission than to have his sister slaughtered and debased by a pair of out-of-control lycans?’

‘Xavier? Are you telling me Xavier Carter set up Arana’s murder? Are you insane?’ Caitlin held his gaze. She wanted to deny it, but the things Kane had said started seeping in. ‘He would have been creating warfare.’

‘Think about it, Caitlin. Was there anybody who didn’t know who Arana was? Any third species who didn’t know of Kane and his reputation? Do you not think she would have mentioned it in her last desperate pleas? No one would dare touch her. Let alone what they did. You think she didn’t scream it from the rooftops as they finished her off?’

‘They would have been too far gone to care.’

He stepped up close. ‘They came to me for help and swore me to secrecy. They were terrified after what they did. I had to go along with it and advise them to hand themselves in. Not even I could protect them. I know Xavier expected word to leak out and for Kane to go on the rampage. And Kane would have if I hadn’t got to him first. I told him it had been a set-up. Kane’s got a temper but it never outweighs his need for justice. When he wants that, he’s meticulous and calculated and logical.’

‘So why doesn’t he just go after Xavier? What the hell does it have to do with me?’

‘You know Xavier never does his own dirty work. Do you think he was the one who starved those lycans? Do you think he was the one who stood guard when it was happening? Made sure there were no witnesses? No interruptions? How do you think Arana got to lycan territory in the first place?’

Caitlin’s stomach clenched. Sickness rose at the back of her throat.

‘It took three of them, Caitlin. One of the VCU’s finest to collect Arana. One of the LCU’s finest to deal with the lycans. And one rookie who worshipped them both to be their lapdog. You want to know what this has to do with you? You ask Max. You ask Robert. It’s just a shame your father’s no longer around to face the storm Kane’s got coming.’

Caitlin dropped to her knees, partly in pain and partly in shock.

His words rebounded in her mind, bouncing against numb walls.

Jask crouched in front of her. ‘You really didn’t know, did you?’

She glowered up at him, the fury catching at the back of her throat. ‘You’re lying.’

‘No, your father was the liar. Max. Robert. And Kane is going to make them pay. He’s going to make all of you pay. Slowly and painfully. He’s waited a long time for this, Caitlin. He’s waited a long time for you.’

The door opened behind.

She heard boots against stone. Footsteps whose rhythm she had come to know. A rhythm that had excited her and had made her heart skip a beat in anticipation. Now it filled her with nothing but fear and fury.

Kane stopped in front of her, his lace-up black boots cuffed by his jeans.

She couldn’t bear to look up at him for fear of what he would see in her eyes. She didn’t know what she would say to him or how she would react, her emotions too difficult to place.

‘I told her,’ Jask declared.

Kane said nothing, but she could feel his eyes burning into her.

‘And you were right,’ Jask added. ‘She didn’t have any idea.’

She didn’t know how the hell she didn’t cry. Probably the shock. The prospect of the three men she cared most about, had trusted most, allowing that to happen. To help set it up. To be so weak as to follow Xavier’s orders. It made her feel sick. But it had to be a lie. She knew them and they were not capable of that. Not of those atrocities. She’d seen the pictures of Arana’s mutilated body. No one she knew, no one she cared about, could ever stand by and let that happen. Even her heart had been torn out. Only a monster was capable of standing by and listening to those screams and doing nothing to stop it. Jask was setting them up. But that didn’t matter to Kane. He had his scapegoats. If she ever needed proof she meant nothing to Kane, this was it.

She felt numb as Kane slipped his hand into the crook of her arm, hoisting her to her feet. She swayed, struggled to stand, blood pooling on the floor from her torn foot. She kept her gaze lowered from his, said nothing.

He pushed her chin up with his thumb, gazed into her eyes, but she couldn’t stand it and broke away. She had too much to think about, too much to say and she was just about holding it all in. Meeting those navy-blue eyes for too long was just going to make her erupt one way or another. And neither were going to happen then and there.

He instantly scooped her up. She didn’t argue. She didn’t fight him. Instead, she let him carry her across the room, down the corridor and out into the cool night air.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

H
is relief should have been because she hadn’t managed to ruin his plans, not because she was still breathing. When he’d received the call, when he’d heard she was okay, his heart had jolted from its temporary paralysis. And when he’d seen her on the floor, when he realised as soon as he walked in the room that Jask had let it slip, it wasn’t triumph he felt because she finally knew, it wasn’t disappointment that he hadn’t been able to revel in telling her, it was angst. Angst that she sat alone on the floor, crumbled to her knees, the look in her eyes one he never imagined would pierce him so deep.

Caitlin remained silent next to him for the short car journey back, her head against the glass as she stared out, her hands clenched in her lap. Tears from shock, no doubt also from pain, occasionally leaked from her eyes and more than once he’d seen her hurriedly wipe them away. For the first time, the composed and collected Caitlin looked close to breaking.

She was still trembling and shivering despite the heater being on, her lips a light shade of blue, her complexion pallid. Never had she looked so fragile, so emotionally worn and tired, and he took no pleasure in that. He took no pleasure in seeing the sadness and confusion in her eyes. Her discovering the truth might have been the worse scenario at that stage, but he had to find a way to turn it around again. He certainly couldn’t afford to be governed by sympathy with the perfect outcome so close.

He opened the electronic garage door remotely and drove inside, letting it close behind him as he shut off the headlights and engine.

He looked across at her and her reddened eyes met his. ‘Jask is lying, Kane. He’s lying to protect his own back. I know what happened to your sister. There is no way my father, Max or Rob had any part of that.’

He studied her eyes carefully, the accumulation of resentment and panic simmering behind them. Resentment and panic either at realising her family’s closely guarded secret had been uncovered, or, if she hadn’t known the truth, panic and resentment as she struggled to accept what she was faced with.

‘Jask isn’t lying, Caitlin.’

‘He’s playing you for a fool, Kane. Don’t you see he’s doing what he can to prevent a third-species civil war? Preventing you from taking revenge on his kin? That is what this is about. Those lycans messed up and Jask knows it and he is using the people I care about as scapegoats.’

‘Because the whole unit are squeaky clean, right? Just like your intentions coming after me were purely professional.’

‘So where’s your proof? Your evidence? Nothing was found at the scene. The only reason those two lycans were detained was because they confessed. Confessed, Kane. I read those confessions. It should never have happened, but it did. And it was nothing to do with my family.’

But this was not the time to argue. Not with the state she was in. He stepped out of the car, closed the driver’s side and opened the passenger side for her.

He reached in to help her out but she pushed him away, not even looking at him.

He stepped back, hating watching her struggle as she lost her balance against the bonnet before limping across to the door, determined to keep her pride intact. It irritated him, but at the same time only made him admire her more.

Kane got there first, unlocking and opening the door before stepping inside. He made his way over to the bed that still sat yanked from the wall. He pulled the rug back across the trapdoor and tugged the bed back into position. It didn’t matter that she’d seen it, there was no way she’d shift the bed on her own – not that she was getting out of his sight again. She was in shock and she was angry and that made her more unpredictable than ever – and that meant he’d guard her closer than ever.

She leaned against the counter, clearly unable to take the weight on her foot, her elbow resting on the surface to help support herself. She still trembled but that seemed to be more to do with the shock than being cold now, the colour returning to her cheeks and lips.

He stepped into the bathroom and started to run a bath before making his way back out into the lounge.

‘We need to get that foot sorted before you develop an infection in it.’

‘As if that will make a difference,’ she said, irritation swamping her eyes.

He reached for her arm, but she pulled back. ‘Don’t touch me.’

He instantly scooped her up again. She protested despite her weakness, wriggling in his arms. ‘Put me down!’

‘And have you bleed all over the place?’ There was no way he was leaving her in that much pain for the next 24 hours. The pain she was trying to ignore because she was so caught up in her own fury.

He carried her to the bathroom, ignoring her futile protests, and placed her fully clothed down in the half-filled bath. She flinched but avoided eye contact, clearly knowing she had no choice but to concede. Instead, she drew her knees to her chest, holding up the foot that pained her, her eyes emanating defeat.

He sat on the step and reached across the bath for the soap, handing it to her. ‘Here.’

Reluctantly she took it, lathering it up slowly in her hands before cleansing her wounded foot.

‘You’re lucky that’s the only damage you’re suffering. You could have got yourself seriously hurt out there, Caitlin. What the fuck were you thinking running out on me?’

‘More hurt than being stuck in here with you? Disappointed you weren’t the one to tell me your insane theory?’ she asked, glowering at him. But she lowered her gaze as quickly as she had met his, returning her attention to her feet and calves. ‘You’re making a terrible mistake, Kane.’

‘No. Your father, Max and Robert made a terrible mistake the day they agreed to tie my sister to a post and set those lycans on her.’

‘It was not a set-up, Kane. That’s just what Jask wants you to believe. I know my family. They would never have done that. They would never be capable of that.’

‘You were a child at the time. What would you have known about anything?’

‘I wasn’t a child when I was with Rob. Far from it. He wouldn’t have been able to keep that from me. We—’

‘Shared a bed. I know. And I don’t need reminding.’

Caitlin stared at him, her eyes emanating disgust, shame. ‘Is that part of the reason you slept with me? Was that part of your revenge? Is that what all those questions about my relationship with Rob were about? This is about more than you taking my soul. I’m intricate to your little revenge plot, aren’t I? You’re using me. Making me pay just as much for what you think they did to Arana. That’s why you chose me.’ Her eyes widened into panic. ‘Am I to suffer the same fate? Is that what you’re planning?’

‘They spread the rumour that she had gone there to meet with the lycans for her latest kick. They stood by when they tortured and defiled her and let it happen. Your family and boyfriend ripped away the only thing I had left to care about and all because Xavier wasn’t getting his own way. They purposely left her there for me to find. They killed her to get to me. How the fuck do you think that makes me feel?’

She seemed momentarily startled by the venom in his voice, the venom he could no longer suppress as she defended her loved ones so fervently.