Blood Shadows (48 page)

Caitlin’s breath had caught in her throat. She hadn’t dared turn to face him, hadn’t dared given him the opportunity to look back into her eyes because she would have said something she’d have regretted. She would have laid down a challenge she wasn’t sure she could meet.

Because as she’d stood alone in that lobby, as the only people she had left had been led down to containment, as she’d left that courthouse and walked the dark streets of Lowtown and into the top end of Blackthorn, she knew that’s exactly what she was now – totally alone.

And she knew the real reason why she had resolved to cross the border – and it wasn’t all about being a coward.

She pushed her coffee aside, unable to face the tepid liquid.

‘So is he as good as they say?’

Caitlin’s attention snapped to the three young women as she searched for the one who had spoken.

The woman who sat the furthest away widened her heavily made-up brown eyes expectantly. ‘Worth grassing on your own family for, I mean.’

They were all human. She could see that now.

The one sat next to her sniggered. ‘Honey, I’d be tempted to give up my own kids for a night with him.’

Caitlin met each of their expectant stares in turn – stares that were a mixture of accusation, curiosity and jealousy.

She had to keep her mouth shut, that’s what she’d been told. She spoke to no one or the thread her job was already hanging by would be cut. They were waiting for an excuse. They only kept her on to reinforce the image they had created that they were representing justice. She was their mascot of proof of that. At least for the time being.

She grabbed her jacket and scarf and slipped out of the booth.

‘Word is he’s done with you now,’ one of the other women called out behind her. ‘So does that mean he’s open to offers?’

Caitlin yanked open the door and stepped back out into the darkness. At least the rain had ceased. The chill to her face was instant, small puffs of warm exhalation mingling with the night air. But she was sure the way her skin prickled was about more than the temperature. She’d never so brazenly hung around Blackthorn at night, so lost for what to do. It created a feeling of paranoia and she found herself scanning the street warily as she felt she was being watched. A few more passers-by sent her fleeting stares but said nothing. It was a bad idea. She knew she was asking for trouble, but something in her just didn’t care. She’d find another café – somewhere to wile away a couple more hours until deciding to go and face the awaiting mob.

Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d find a room somewhere and keep her head down for a couple of days. Maybe she could wake up when it was all over.

A few people nudged past her, chatting and laughing, a couple engrossed in a discussion she only caught part of, all exacerbating her sense of isolation more.

She glanced up at the dense cloud weighing heavily with threat of further rain.

She looked across the street, almost by instinct.

Her heart pounded, every tiny hair on the back of her neck standing on end as he looked back across at her. She didn’t need the clear light of the moon to know it was him, she felt it – a dangerous sense of elation albeit one overwhelmed by the feeling it was about to be extinguished.

From the shadows across the street, Kane had watched her in the café.

She’d sat alone in a booth, staring into the mug she’d barely drunk from the entire time she’d been there. She’d been absorbed in her own world in a way he’d come to know only too well watching her all those years. Only now he’d touched her, tasted her, seen parts of her that no one else had seen. And she’d seen too much of him. Far too much.

He’d had her followed from Lowtown and across the border, had received the call as to the café she had entered.

He also knew the results of the verdict. He knew of what she had been put through on the stand when they had questioned her loyalty to him compared with her loyalty to her unit. She’d done an amazing job apparently, even though they’d torn her apart in the stand, with the testimonies of other agents, including Brovin and Morgan, letting leak what they termed her fixation with Kane. But he knew it wasn’t just about him. It wasn’t just about Arana. For Caitlin it had been about justice and doing the right thing. It was about her standing up for the ideals that she believed in – that the unit could do good work. And she wanted to prove that they weren’t all corrupted. She was doing her bit to retain the peace that could implode in the district. It was damage limitation in her eyes – not that her opposition saw it that way. That she believed there were those who needed to be defended. That some kind of order needed to be maintained.

Unfortunately, she’d always believe that that order had to be from humans.

He’d watched her as she’d stepped out onto the pavement – hesitant, lost, wary – pulling on her coat and wrapping her scarf around her. And he’d followed her as she’d kept her eyes downturned. This was not agent Parish walking through Blackthorn; it was Caitlin with all her official status stripped away. It was irresponsible of her, naïve and careless. Stupid even. She was the easiest picking on the street. Lucky for her that word was already out that nobody touched her. That he hadn’t finished.

He was far from finished.

He didn’t know what had made her look up but as if by instinct, she’d snatched her gaze across to his. He’d felt a jolt through him, her beautiful eyes widening in mixed emotions.

They could have been completely alone on the street for all anyone else mattered at that moment – the moment they’d connected again.

But Caitlin didn’t stop. She didn’t back away. She didn’t run the way she’d come. She looked back ahead and kept walking down the parallel side of the street.

At first he wondered if it was some kind of trap, and she most definitely the honey. But he’d been watching long enough to know she was very much alone. And if she had been on the job of snaring him, she would have been more alert, more purposeful. He knew her too well not to be able to recognise the signs of that rare occasion when her defences were down. But then again, she was the only one who could surprise him. The only one who could ever throw him off guard.

Regardless, she was well and truly in his territory – alone, accessible and deliciously vulnerable. And it was the alone that she clearly wanted – alone with him. She knew he’d follow. He liked to think she wouldn’t have dared stroll deeper and deeper into Blackthorn if she suspected otherwise. Because he could so easily leave her to weave herself into her own demise, sauntering along those dark, rundown, isolated streets. The high square heels of the smart black dolly shoes she’d worn to court echoed lightly over the concrete as she turned down a side street, the flare of her demure grey dress blowing lightly against her knees.

He took a cigarette from the inside pocket of his jacket and stopped only for a moment to ignite the tip before continuing behind her, keeping just the right distance for her to know he was there, and so she couldn’t slip out of his sight. Not that he wouldn’t find her again. It was just whether someone else found her first.

They passed the wrought-iron bars that enclosed what was once one of the grand houses when it had been the heart of a city. Now it was as dilapidated as the rest of the buildings that couldn’t be spared the expense of maintenance. She avoided the cobbles and kept to the paving before crossing over and down another dark stretch.

She clearly wanted to make sure they weren’t going to be seen. And if they were being followed – by the press, other agents or anyone else who thought they might try their chances – she’d given Kane plenty of time to detect them and eradicate them.

This was purely between them. Every instinct told him that. Caitlin was looking to wrap this up as much as he was.

Halfway down the bleak cobbled street, she turned slowly to face him.

He stopped, exhaled a steady stream of smoke that dissipated into the cool air. She wanted to rein that little bit of control she had. She wanted to take the lead.

She really should have learned by now.

As rain started to bounce on the cobbles, glistening against the backdrop of the only two un-smashed streetlamps, she took a right into the open porch of one of the abandoned houses.

He blinked droplets from his lashes before following her to the splintered stone archway.

Inside, she leaned back against the paint-flaked wall of the left side of the porch, her slightly damp hair already tousling, her beautiful milky-coffee eyes dark in the ungenerous light. But he could still read them, the same as he could read the rest of her. She was prepared for confrontation. When she’d seen him across the street, she was not going to run and hide. She was not going to back down. And those wary eyes were guarded and prepared. She was frightened, but she wasn’t frightened to face those fears.

He leaned against the side of the archway furthest away from her, his back to the darkness. ‘You should already be heading to some distant locale by now.’

‘Is that what you were hoping?’

He exhaled curtly, a simultaneous stream of smoke escaping his nose and mouth. He looked to the cracked black-and-white-tiled floor as he ran his tongue swiftly down his incisor before looking back at her. ‘You’re playing a dangerous game, Caitlin.’

‘Why? Is this where it ends? Have you followed me to finish it, Kane?’

‘You’re asking me that after leading me into a dark recess?’

‘As opposed to sitting and waiting for you to come for me? You know I don’t work like that.’

‘Do you remember the first thing I said to you?’

‘A little girl doing a man’s job. How can I forget?’

‘Bound to end in tears,’ he added, before throwing his cigarette to the floor. He exhaled a final steady stream of smoke as he crushed and extinguished the cigarette beneath his boot before stepping into the porch.

He sensed her tense though she was trying hard to contain it.

He faced her square on. ‘Take your jacket and scarf off.’

She frowned contemplatively for a moment but complied. She knew he wanted to be sure she had nothing hidden. No surprises. No hemlock in gun handles. She unravelled her scarf and slipped her jacket over her slender shoulders before laying them down on the worn wooden bench beside her.

He purposely and tauntingly raked her slowly with his gaze up from her delicate feet to her tentative eyes. She was breathing a little faster, shallower, her pulse already racing. He lingered on her exposed collarbone, her smooth, now flawless throat, her lips already plumping with arousal. She still wanted him. Despite her every instinct probably telling her how deeply wrong it was, her heart was well and truly his.

‘I hear you did good in that courtroom, Caitlin.’

‘What they did was wrong, but that doesn’t make me proud of what I’ve done. I just hope that once all this dies down, people see what I did as proof that not all agents are corrupt. The majority of us are trying to do good for this community. I still believe in the TSCD and I’ll continue to stand by that.’

‘Dogmatic as ever,’ he said, glancing at her lips again, parted and ready for him to graze.

‘They’re still going to want to talk to you, Kane.’

‘And they can still go and fuck themselves.’

‘You should have stood up and told them what Xavier tried to do all those years.’

‘That hearing was about Arana, not me. They had their key witnesses.’

‘One of whom is now no use to you. One who still fervently advocates the establishment you despise.’

He knew she was referring to her. Her tone was challenging but resolute. ‘Seemingly so,’ he said.

He stepped up to her. Heard her catch her breath. She shuddered a little – partly apprehension, partly the gentle breeze leaking in from outside. Grasping the midway point on the skirt of her dress, he slowly bunched up the thick woven cotton until her thighs were exposed to the cool night air. He slipped his hands underneath, finding the bare flesh above the lace tops of her hold-ups. It was the only place she had left to hide anything. His ready erection throbbed, uncomfortably confined in his jeans. He slid his hand up over her warm and tender silken curves before reaching the lace band of her knickers.

Caitlin didn’t flinch this time, but he detected the subtle tremor in her lower lip. Something he now knew, from studying her so closely the past few days, was a sign of competing emotions. She didn’t not want this, but she also had all the reasons why she shouldn’t contending inside her.

He slowly and purposefully slid her delicate, white lace knickers down until they fell to the floor.

She subtly stepped out of them, not daring to take her eyes off his as he pressed a hand to the wall beside her head. He leaned inches away from her lips as he gazed deep into her eyes, detected her held breath. ‘So, Caitlin, are you still out to convict me?’

He could feel her heart pounding. ‘You admitted yourself that you’ve done a lot of bad things, Kane.’

He smiled. ‘And I’ll continue to do a lot of bad things. I’m a very bad vampire, Caitlin.’

‘Then I have no choice, do I?’

‘So detain me,’ he said as he leaned in to kiss her neck, her skin warm and sweet against his tongue as he licked along her artery. She wore the same perfume – the perfume that had become indicative of her. Her shallow breaths were as enticing as they had been when he’d first slammed her against the wall back in that corridor. Only now they were breaths that were all too familiar – breaths he knew for a fact were the heady mix of fear and arousal. He brushed his lips over her ear and whispered, ‘I dare you.’