Most Wanted - A Fantasy Romance Novel (The Shadow Blade Series) (5 page)

Jax stepped
silently past her and disappeared into the shadows. He crouched low and made
his way closer to the shore, a feeling of growing disquiet nagging at him. He
felt that tug he’d felt before in the bar, as though a thin filament was
connecting him to Ariel and it was unspooling as he moved away from her, making
him feel slightly panicked. He was worried for her.

He shook his
head ruefully, reminding himself that Ariel was a bounty hunter, that she was
half Shadow, that she had been collecting bounties for years. She’d put those
bikers down no problem the other night. She knew how to handle herself. But
still, he couldn’t help but feel nervous at the thought of putting her in
danger. Once again he doubted his wisdom in bringing her into this.

About ten meters
from the shore Jax stopped and crouched down on his haunches to wait. He drew
his blade and held it low so it wouldn’t catch the moonlight and give him away.
He scanned the cavernous space beneath the pier, trying to estimate how many
there were. He reckoned close to thirty. Cy had either got his intel wrong or
more had been sired in the last twenty-four hours.

Jax edged even closer,
ducking behind one of the pier supports, wishing he could see Ariel. Light
filtered through the slats of the pier and he was just able to make out the
faces of the Suckers. They were high, that much was obvious, though whether it
was just blood lust sending them into a frenzy or whether it was fuelled by
something else, Jax wasn’t sure. Their fangs were glinting, and their clothes
were sprayed with red. They looked as though they’d been hosed down with
crimson paint. They were gathered in a rough circle, pushing and shoving and
shrieking, but thankfully their focus was on whatever was in the center of the
circle.
 
He had a fairly good idea
of what that might be.

Somewhat
creepily the scene reminded Jax of kids gathering to watch a playground fight.
 
Just then the circle broke apart and Jax
caught a brief glimpse of a young girl, no older than fifteen, crouched down in
the center. She was on her knees, bent over sobbing. Her face, when she looked
up briefly, was a fright mask of terror. She held up bloodstained hands and
screamed and Jax saw a Sucker leap into the circle, grab her by the throat and
haul her to her feet. The circle pressed forwards closing the gap, blocking
Jax’s view.

There was a
stomach-wrenching scream that sent Jax flying to his feet, his saw blades in
one hand, his blade in the other. His whole instinct was urging him forwards,
into the circle to rescue the girl, but stone cold reason stopped him. He
needed to wait and let Ariel make a first pass. He’d stayed alive this long by
listening to his reason, not by rushing in like a fool.

Once again the
circle parted for a second, giving Jax a broken glimpse of the girl, now lying
on the ground. Blood flowed in rivers from a wound to her shoulder and what Jax
thought had been the pattern of her dress, he now saw was in fact blood,
streaks of it painting her bare arms and her legs, staining what was left of
her clothing. They were circling her like hyenas, taking it in turns to dart
forwards and bite her. Jax’s stomach turned. What were they doing? It was like
they were just playing with her. Suckers liked to kill yes, but they weren’t
usually sadistic about it.
 

Jax had seen Suckers
feasting before. He had disposed of bodies that had been feasted on – not
that there was ever much left to dispose of. When Suckers fed they were like jackals,
tearing people limb from limb, ripping out intestines and eating organs while
they still pulsed. They didn’t just drink blood, they ate the entire body, gnawing
the bones to dust. But this girl, they were toying with her, torturing her for what
looked like fun. Were they trying to infect her? It was possible, given the
bite marks. But the amount of damage they were doing make it unlikely. When
they infected someone they just needed to bite them once.

The saw blades
Jax was carrying cut into his palms. He eased his grip. The last thing he
needed was for them to smell fresh blood. He was itching to start throwing them
already. Where the hell was Ariel? Why was she taking so long? He couldn’t
stand there a moment longer, watching them taunt the poor girl, listening to
her screams. She was as good as dead already anyway. She’d been bitten. Within
twenty hours she’d succumb to the virus. The kindest thing he could do was put
her out of her misery. He brought his arm back, sliding a circular saw blade
between his thumb and middle finger and took aim.

Ariel stared at
the pile of dead bodies off to one side feeling bile rise up her throat. From a
distance it had looked like a pile of driftwood but as she drew nearer and had
caught a waft of decaying flesh, she had realized it wasn’t a pile of litter at
all, but rather a mound of discarded limbs and blood-spattered body parts. The
screams of the girl cut through her horror-struck trance. Ariel dragged her
eyes away from the fly-ridden pile of human debris and turned back to the
circling bloodsuckers. The girl they were toying with had struggled to her
feet, and was now spinning around, one arm hanging limply at her side, trying
uselessly to defend herself with a piece of wood.

A Sucker close
to Ariel threw his head back and brayed loudly and Ariel caught the iron tang
of fresh blood on the air mixed with the toxic scent of panic. The girl’s
heartbeat was a loud thrum, her pulse ragged. It was driving the Suckers wild. An
Emo-looking girl with bright red hair that was flaming like a halo around her
head moved in a blur and took a bite out of the girl’s shoulder. She fell to
the ground with an agonized yelp and the Sucker turned to Ariel, blood smeared
across her face, looking elated.

Mother sucking
bastards, Ariel thought as she merged with the shadows and slipped between the
ranks of jostling Suckers. The first one, the braying one, went down with a
blade between his ribs. Ariel pulled it free and dragged it across the neck of
the red-haired girl who let out a bleat of surprise before hitting the sand
face first.

By then the
others had figured out something was happening, that something was in their
midst, but they still couldn’t see her. Ariel slid beneath an outstretched arm,
punching her blade through the heart of the next one and then the next. That
was four down. In five more seconds she had taken out another three. Panic was
sown. The Suckers started running up the beach in Jax’s direction, just as
she’d planned.

The beauty of
killing Suckers was that it didn’t matter where you hit them, so long as you
sliced through their flesh with silver. Silver killed the Sucker virus. Once
the virus was destroyed the human host body died instantly. It was kind of fun
to watch and made killing Suckers like shooting fish in a barrel.

As Ariel swept
up the stragglers, trying to shepherd them in Jax’s direction, something
whistled by her ear. She spun around and saw a circular saw blade slam into the
forehead of a Sucker who had been coming up right behind her. She twisted and
ducked as he lurched her way, arms outstretched. How was it still moving? Ariel
watched in shock as he yanked the blade out of his skull like he was pulling a
splinter from his foot. How was that possible? The blades were silver. Silver
should be enough to kill them. But the guy wasn’t dead. He was the opposite of
dead. He was still coming at her, frenzied and snarling. Ariel slashed her
blade down hard, severing his hands at the wrists.

He paused to
stare at the stumps and at his hands sticking out of the sand and let out a
howl of outrage.

Ariel stared
down at her dripping blade, realizing she was visible. It would be at least ten
minutes, maybe longer, before she would be able to fade again. That had taken
it out of her. But she wasn’t about to wait this one out. There were a dozen
Suckers zoning in on Jax. Ariel sprinted up the beach towards them, whirling
her blade as she ran, slicing two across the back of the neck and sending the
saw blade into the back of a third one’s thigh and hamstringing him. He
collapsed face down in the sand and she leaped over him.

By the time she
reached Jax it seemed like there were even more of them. Where had they all
appeared from? One thrust in front of her and Ariel saw it was the girl with
red hair. Hadn’t she killed her already? She could see the cut her knife had
made across her throat. She danced out the way of the Sucker’s snarling fangs
and jabbed her in the stomach with the point of her blade. The Sucker looked
down grimacing, but then smacked the blade away and kept coming at her. Ariel
whipped around and saw Jax battling at least six Suckers, moving like a
dervish, spinning this way and that, lashing out with his blade but barely
managing to keep them at bay. And then she saw, with a sinking feeling, that
they were starting to surround her too. What the hell?

Ariel grunted
and lunged and managed to cut two outstretched hands, slicing off fingers as
they tried to grab for her. Jax and her were now back to back, thrusting and
jabbing with their blades in ever more frantic swipes, trying to keep the
screaming hoards of Suckers at bay.

‘What the hell
are these things?’ she screamed over their shrieking cries. How were they not
dead?

‘Thought you
could tell me,’ Jax shouted back.

 
‘That would be a no. But it looks like
you’re screwed,’ Ariel answered, slashing her blade across the arm of a Sucker
girl who had crept close.

‘Me?’ Jax asked,
pausing briefly to look Ariel’s way before darting low to jab the red haired
girl in the side. She was starting to look like a pincushion. But she still
showed no signs of falling down dead.

Ariel tried to
calculate how much longer she had before she’d be able to fade again. She could
slip between them, slice off a few limbs and carve a path out of there. Over
the snapping jaws and bobbing heads of their assailants she made out the blonde
human girl they had been tormenting. She was on her feet, staggering up the
beach. Ariel figured she could at least try to lead them in the opposite
direction, try to give the girl a chance, though really what was the point. The
best thing might be to just kill her before she succumbed to the virus.

But what about
Jax? She couldn’t just leave him at their mercy. They’d tear him to pieces. But
if she stayed they were both going to die the voice in her head pointed out.

At her side she
heard Jax roar and watched him bring his blade down in a savage chop that took
off the hand of a girl with dripping fangs who was wearing a Justin Bieber
T-shirt and leopard print leggings. She deserved that for fashion crimes, Ariel
thought to herself, before she was distracted by another girl, this one looking
only about fifteen, who was crawling low across the sand, beneath the thrashing
arms, aiming for a sneak attack. She kicked her in the head and then stabbed
her blade through her spinal cord severing it. The girl lay there unmoving.
They couldn’t be killed, but clearly they could be injured.

‘I have a plan,’
Ariel yelled to Jax.

‘What?’ Jax
grunted in reply, throwing his last saw blade. It embedded itself with a thunk
into the throat of the red-haired girl but didn’t do much to stop her. She
still kept coming at them, her nails raking the air just inches in front of his
face.

‘Get ready to
run!’ Ariel hissed, and before Jax could say a word she faded. It took almost
all her energy and she knew she couldn’t hold it for long. Fading was like flexing
a deeply buried muscle. It required lots of focus and effort to hold it, and
the muscle quickly tired.

There was a gasp
from the Suckers around them as Ariel vanished into thin air. She heard Jax
swear under his breath as they all surged towards him taking advantage of the
gap. Gathering herself Ariel started to swing brutally, cutting a swathe
straight through them, opening up a path.

She hoped Jax
was fast enough to make it through behind her. Suckers fell back screeching as
she aimed for hamstrings and eyes, swiping at anything in her way. Her blade
was sharp and cut through their flesh like she was slicing through warm butter.

Behind her she
felt Jax hot on her heels. ‘Run!’ she yelled.

‘Get on!’

Jax swung his
leg over his motorbike. He glanced over Ariel’s shoulder and saw the swarm of
Suckers, or whatever the hell they were, stampeding towards them along the
boardwalk. A couple of the homeless guys sleeping rough on the grass jerked
awake and he saw one get trampled.

‘Hurry!’ he
urged.

Ariel threw her
leg over the back of Jax’s bike. As soon as she did he revved the engine and
tore off down the street feeling Ariel’s arms wrapping around his waist, her
body clinging to his in order to stay on the bike. He revved the engine harder
and felt the muscles of her thighs grip his, her cheek pressing between his
shoulder blades.

It was only when
he hit the freeway that he realized he was heading in the direction of his
place and that he hadn’t even stopped to check if Ariel was OK with that. But
she was pressed against his back and his blood was still roaring in his ears,
his heart pounding from the fight, and maybe too, from the feel of her body
fitting against his own so perfectly. He was aware of her heart beating as loud
and fast as his own, her body huddled against his, sheltering from the biting wind,
which he himself strangely wasn’t feeling at all. The fizzing electric current
between the two of them, which seemed to have amplified since the fight, was
keeping him warm.

Ariel didn’t say
a word as he kept driving. She wasn’t asking him where they were going or
telling him to pull over, and he took that for silent acquiescence.
Acquiescence to what he wasn’t totally sure, but he had a few ideas. For a
brief moment he pondered the wisdom of bringing a bounty hunter back to his
place. The Blades were notoriously secretive. They had to be. It was what kept
them alive. That Ariel knew what he was was danger enough, that he was about to
show her where he lived was possibly the stupidest thing he’d ever done. She
was a bounty hunter. He didn’t know whether or not they’d ever put a bounty on
a Blade but it wasn’t impossible. But still, he tossed the thought aside and
kept on driving. Another thought drifted into his mind; Ariel was half demon.
What was he getting into? But she felt fully human and she looked fully human, the
voice in his head argued, the same voice that was imagining what she looked
like under those clothes.

The thought
stirred him, the thought of what lay ahead, the possibility of Ariel in his
bed, naked beneath him, stirred him even more, and he had to rein in his speed.
Watching her fight had unleashed something in him, something he would freely
admit was both primal and base. During the fight he’d moved from wanting to
protect her to wanting only to observe her. He’d wanted to stand aside so he
could marvel at her speed and grace and strength. She seemed unvanquishable,
all powerful, and the thought of taming her, of seeing that speed and grace and
strength translate into the bedroom excited him, perhaps more than it should.

What would Neve
say if she knew? He felt guilty thinking about her and tried to push the
thought away. She would never know. And Ariel… something about her, about her
defiance as much as her pride and her beauty, had sparked something in him. She
was unlike any other woman he’d ever met. A voice in his head pointed out that
that was because she wasn’t human. Or not fully at least.

Ariel didn’t say
a word when Jax drove the zigzagging Mulholland Road. Her hands loosened their
grip as he slowed the bike but her body leaned with his into the bends, and her
palms, resting gently against his stomach, seemed to be searing their heat
right through his T-shirt, branding his skin. Her heart rate hadn’t slowed
either since their sprint up the beach, and when Jax cut the engine of the bike
and turned towards Ariel, he felt it miss a few beats.

He swung his leg
over the bike and held a hand out to help her off the bike. She chose to ignore
it, climbing off by herself, and twisting to look at the house. Jax saw the
shock register on her face before she quickly blanked it off and painted on her
usual indifferent expression. He smiled to himself. She liked to act
inscrutable but she was easier to read than she thought. He wondered what it
would take to see the real Ariel McQueen, and what it would take to be able to
prize the mask off her.

Jax looked up at
the house, trying to see it through Ariel’s eyes. It was a big house. A
beautiful house for sure. His sanctuary. His and Neve’s house. The place they
had planned to raise children in. As they walked up the steps to the front door
Jax realized that maybe he should have hidden traces of Neve in case Ariel
asked questions. But it was too late for that.

Ariel paused on
the step and turned to look at the view over LA. A blanket of lights twinkled
below them, cut off only by the dark void of the Pacific. As Jax watched her,
something softened in Ariel’s expression. It was as if she’d never seen LA from
this viewpoint and was stunned by its impossible beauty. The haughty
indifference fell away and she took a deep breath in, exhaling softly. Jax felt
another stirring, an urge to wrap his arms around her from behind and bury his
lips in her hair, to just hold her like that and try to keep her in that
moment. She seemed almost content, the mask had slipped and he’d just caught
his first sight of the real Ariel beneath.

Ariel turned
around to find Jax staring at her, almost wonderingly, a curious expression on
his face. Her heart skipped a beat. He was even more beautiful than the damn
view. And the house. Holy shit. It was like something out of movie; all glass
and steel and concrete. She was sure it had probably featured on the front of
Architectural Digest and was no doubt worth tens of millions of dollars. How
much money did the guy have exactly? More than her, came the answer.

As he led her to
the front door Ariel thought of her disgusting hovel of a home, with the dirty
dishes, screaming banshee neighbors upstairs, and the croaking air-con which
rattled all night but which drowned out the sound of addicts shooting up in the
stairwell. She thought of the tattoo parlor downstairs, and the drug dealers
outside her door and the syringes that littered the stairwell. It was OK for
some she thought to herself, as Jax put his key in the lock and pushed opened
the door.

Ariel gathered
herself and walked inside, starting to have second thoughts about what she was
doing. Not that she really knew what she was doing. She’d not said a word on
the back of the bike, some silent assent passing between her and Jax that this
night was going to end with them in bed. After the fight her bloodlust had been
at an all time high, adrenaline scoring through her body like an acid trip.

If Jax had
shoved her against a wall and kissed her she probably would have given into it
right there and then, ignoring even the frenzied, braying Suckers storming up
the beach after them. Which was why, when he had kept driving, she had stayed
silent, feeling the rigid lines of his stomach beneath her palms, his taut
shoulders and muscular back sheltering her from the wind, and enjoying every
minute of it.

She admitted it
to herself. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted any man. But now she was
no longer near him, no longer pressing against his back, and her bloodlust had
abated somewhat, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to just give herself to him. She
didn’t just give herself to men, not until they’d earned it. And then there was
the fact she’d already decided that she was going to hand him over to the
Brothers one day. Sleeping with him might make that harder. Might make it
easier too though she mused, hardening herself to the inevitable.

Jax stood aside
to let her into the hallway. Ariel strolled past him trying to look nonchalant
but her eyes quickly scanned the interior, taking it in in total amazement. The
ceilings were double height, huge expanses of windows facing the view and the
twinkling blanket of lights below. Ariel caught sight of a swimming pool
through the window, illuminated and glinting turquoise. It was opulent without
being lavish and the thing that struck her most was the feeling of peace and
total solitude that surrounded them. It was bizarrely quiet. That was what she
finally put her finger on. There were no yelling neighbors screaming in
Vietnamese, or crack addicts fighting in the stairwell. There was just pure,
blissful silence and clean air. They were above the smog. Despite the cold
steel and concrete exterior the inside of the house was warm and inviting. She
glanced at Jax, maybe it was a little like the owner in that respect. Ariel
took a few steps into the living room, aware that Jax was standing back,
observing her.

There was an
enormous L-shaped sofa in the center of the room, scattered with cushions. It
was the kind of sofa you found in an actual store, and not sitting on a street
corner decorated with cigarette burns and a ‘free to a good home’ sign. A vase
of white roses sat on what looked like an antique side table, and a more modern
looking coffee table sat in the middle of the space and was stacked with a pile
of books. Ariel resisted the urge to walk over and explore further. Instead she
turned back to the hallway, taking in the sweep of the staircase leading up to
the second floor. She wondered what his bedroom looked like.

It was only then
that Ariel realized something about the house that made her heart sink. It had
a woman’s touch about it. Either a gay man or a woman had decorated this home,
she was sure of it. Her gut was telling her so. It wasn’t just the flowers or
the paintings, it was the whole vibe. He lived there with a woman. She would
bet on it.

Ariel whipped
around to face him. ‘So, you live here alone?’ she asked, hoping the question
sounded innocuous. Her heart drummed in her ears though and she realized she
was holding her breath.

Obviously Jax heard
the note of worry in her voice though because when she glanced at him she saw
he was biting back a smile. ‘Yeah,’ he answered, tossing his jacket over a
chair.

Ariel pretended
to study a painting on the wall, so he wouldn’t see the fact she was biting
back a smile of her own. The painting was kind of abstract, sweeps of color
swirling together into a sea of green and pink. It seemed to evoke less a
person or a place than a feeling. She couldn’t exactly explain what the feeling
was, but she knew she felt calm looking at it and that she didn’t want to tear
her eyes off it.

‘You like it?’
Jax asked, coming up behind her. He was so silent when he walked that Ariel jumped.
She didn’t like it that he could sneak up on her. She also didn’t like the
magnetic draw of his chest, or her own body’s automatic reaction to his
proximity, which was to try to lean backwards and close the distance.

‘Yeah, it’s
nice, ’ Ariel mumbled, wishing she knew something about art. ‘Who painted it?’ she
asked.

‘I did,’ Jax
answered after a beat.

Ariel shot him a
look over her shoulder. Was he joking? It appeared not. He had walked back into
the hallway.
 
She followed after him,
casting a lingering glance back at the canvas. He had painted that? Wow. Jax
Sayer really was full of surprises; a millionaire demon-slayer with a sensitive,
artistic side. Who’d have thought it?

Ariel had little
in the way of formal education herself, and definitely no time to set up an
easel and get in touch with her inner creative. Her father had taught her how
to kill a man before he had even bothered to teach her the alphabet. She had
been practicing martial arts since the age of four. While other kids were
learning to throw a baseball she’d been learning to throw knives. While other
kids were taking SATs she was already on the streets, having to hustle for a
living. Her father had died when she was fifteen, leaving her alone, having to
fend for herself.

 
So no, she’d never had much time to study,
or go to museums, or read books, or sketch bowls of fruit. Her one guilty pleasure
was movies. That was her one escapism, had been since she was a kid and her
father had left her in front of the TV every time he’d gone out hunting. She
was a horror film aficionado, though any movie except for romantic comedies
would do. She’d met Saul at a midnight showing of
The Omen
. They’d shared an obsession for horror movies and for
Mexican food and had spent all their free time hanging out in the back row of
movie theatres. Thinking of Saul made her mood instantly sour.

‘What do you
think those things were?’ Jax asked once he’d led her into the kitchen. ‘Have you
ever seen anything like them before?’

 
Ariel barely heard him. She was staring
at all the appliances lined up on the mortuary clean surfaces. The dining table
was big enough to seat twenty Suckers, and the refrigerator was so huge it could
have housed a dozen bodies in it.

‘You tell me,’
she muttered wondering why a guy who lived alone needed a place so huge, and
trying to picture him hosting dinner parties or cooking. He didn’t look like
the kind of guy to entertain. He had a melancholy sadness about him that she
recognized. He was a loner like her. She sensed he preferred his own company to
that of others. But maybe that was wrong. What did she know? He didn’t look
like the kind of guy who painted abstract paintings either.

Jax was over at the
sink now. He turned on the faucet and with one swift movement pulled his
T-shirt off over his head.

Words dissolved
on Ariel’s tongue as she took in the sweeping lines of his body, the muscles of
his six-pack and the crisscross of scars, some faded and some more recent. She
ached all of a sudden to run her hands over the contours of his chest, and felt
a pang of something disturbingly like pain combined with a rush of anger when
she considered the fights he must have been in, the hurt evident on his body.
It was only then she saw the fresh wound on his chest, and the blood seeping
down his stomach. She took a step towards him. When had that happened?