Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) Read online

  ‘And the bodies?’

  She’d done the only thing she could. Once she’d stopped staring at the stranger unconscious at her feet, she’d checked his pulse, that he was still alive, before dragging him behind the steps into a shadowy recess. Trembling and gasping, she’d dragged the other bodies fifty feet in the opposite direction, one after the other, piling them against each other in the alley behind the courtyards as she’d kept a watchful eye on the darkness around her, playing excuse after excuse over and over in her head should she be found.

  She’d slipped through the gap in the wall, hightailed it back through the courtyards, through the boarded-up window and up the stairs. She’d kept her composure as she’d made her way through the milling bodies before bounding up the stairs three at a time, grateful that the door to the main lounge had been shut so Pummel wouldn't notice. She’d shoved open the door to her attic bedroom, riffled through her bedside table and grabbed the padlock key, before retracing her steps.

  She’d kept her back to the wall, checking all around before darting across the alley again. Unlocking the mesh door to one of the storage rooms, she’d dragged the stranger inside. And then she’d done the last thing she should have: she’d saved him.

  It had been about more than his potential significance though. Something else had compelled her to give him a chance to survive, and she had no doubt her superficial attraction to him was a major culprit.

  ‘They’re out of sight,’ she said. ‘It’s all sorted.’

  Now he wasn’t just looking at her – he was staring deeply and pensively into her eyes, evoking an added intimacy she experienced too rarely. The result was a connection that felt as dangerous as the sparks firing inside her at being alone with a male other than Pummel – let alone one who caused such stirrings inside her. That in itself gave her more reason to ensure he disappeared back in the depths of the south side of Blackthorn, to mingle with all the other discarded dregs of human society and never cross her path again.

  ‘So finish your water, give yourself a little longer to rest if you have to and then get yourself out of here.’ She chucked him the padlock from her back pocket. He caught it with ease, despite his gaze not leaving hers. ‘And if you want to live, we never met. Lock up after yourself when you’re done,’ she said, turning towards the door.

  ‘Wait!’

  Against her better judgement, she did. Against her better judgement, she turned to face him again. More so, she didn’t prevent him from circling around her to get between her and the only exit.

  She glanced back at the numbers on his arm that now braced the doorway, before looking up into his eyes again. The absence of aggression in his stance was the only thing that prevented her shoving him halfway across the room. But she’d witnessed enough humans morph from charming and playful to brutal and uncontained not to let her guard down. Even the slightest scrape wouldn’t go unnoticed by Pummel; wouldn’t fail to raise questions she didn’t want to answer.

  ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ she warned. ‘You can walk out of here and sort yourself out somewhere else or you can be another body in the pile. Your choice.’

  The fleeting smile that teased his lips surprisingly made her stomach flip with anything but repulsion, the moonlight catching a glint in his eyes. ‘You say that with such confidence.’

  ‘That’s because I mean it.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me.’ He looped the padlock back through the bars, snapping it shut, his hand as steady as the gaze he locked back on hers.

  Her slow-beating heart uncharacteristically skipped a beat. ‘That was your get-out clause.’

  ‘Now it’s yours,’ he said, resting his hand on the concrete-block wall next to the door as he closed the gap between them a little more.

  She glanced back at the numbers on his now tensed forearm. But despite their reminder, thoughts of turning him into nothing but a limp, lifeless body on the ground created an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Prove those numbers right.’

  ‘You know what they mean?’

  ‘I know what every single number means. They don’t change, whatever locale you’re from.’

  ‘But still you chose to save my life, to bring me in here, to offer me safety and water. Somewhere where the chances of being disturbed are minimal, from what you said. Yet here you are alone with me and you’re not even flinching at the prospect of what could happen. What are you?’

  ‘More trouble than this is worth.’

  His lips curled up an intoxicating fraction again. He braced his other arm across the crates, blocking her in and giving her no choice but to back into the corner if she wanted to avoid him touching her. ‘Sate my curiosity – give me a flash of those teeth.’

  Her stomach flipped. She smiled at the audacity of it, simultaneously revealing she didn’t have lycan fangs or the extra set of incisors that were indicative of vampires. Hopefully it was enough to make him back off, especially as she could already feel her nerve endings burning in preparation for retaliation.

  He looked back into her eyes after the fleeting examination. ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ he said. ‘A witch maybe?’

  She refused to flinch as he dared run the back of his hand down her cheek.

  ‘Or maybe not,’ he added. ‘Not a lycan or a vampire according to those teeth, yet still cold to the touch, so a shadow instead of a soul in there, I bet.’

  As he slid the back of his hand down her cleavage, she grabbed his wrist.

  He glanced at the hand that failed to encompass him, before looking back into her eyes. She felt him testing her strength as he twisted his wrist in her grip slightly. But instead of looking perturbed when met with her powerful resilience, he smiled again. ‘Taken from that strength, definitely a third species.’

  ‘You’ve been badly wounded,’ she reminded him. ‘Play alpha some other time.’

  ‘Is that a proposition?’

  ‘It’s advice. I suggest you take it before this gets out of hand. And it will. If you value your life, whatever may be left of it in this district, you’ll back off now. Because if you attempt one thing that those numbers tell me you’re capable of, I’ll kill you without hesitation and leave you down here to rot.’

  ‘There’s nothing sexier than a confident woman,’ he said, freeing his wrist from her grip to place his hand on the wall beside her head. ‘Or whatever the fuck you are.’

  She held her breath against the tension surging inside her, something she could have mistaken as excitement had it not been so distasteful to even consider it. ‘You’ve got a smart mouth.’

  ‘That can do all sorts of tricks.’

  She pressed her head back against the crate as his lips closed in on hers. ‘I’m going to give you to the count of ten to back off.’

  ‘Only ten? That’s not very generous. Why did you save me?’

  ‘Because I believe in a fair fight. Eight.’

  ‘Eight? That’s not fair – you hadn’t told me you’d started.’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘Five,’ he said.

  ‘Four.’

  He frowned. ‘I thought you third species had perfect vision.’

  Her pulse picked up a notch as he searched her gaze.

  He leaned a little closer. ‘So tell me – why are you wearing contact lenses?’

  Her heart skipped a beat. As she opened her mouth to say “one”, his free hand clutched her jaw. He closed his mouth over hers, stunning her to stillness, to silence, as she felt warm, human lips for the first time.

  Her stomach flipped. She kept her eyes wide open and stared back into his whilst he parted her tense lips.

  He closed his eyes only momentarily before staring unapologetically back into hers again. At the same time, his tongue shamelessly met hers, coiling around it enticingly and blatantly with an ownership that only added to her shock before he licked the underside of her teeth.

  Befo
re she had time to think, her reactions uncharacteristically slow, he’d retracted.

  With a smirk of sated triumph, he backed up a few steps away from her. But only because he’d now felt for himself what he hadn’t believed he’d seen – that there were no hidden fangs or extra incisors. And the contrast of the clinical intention of the kiss against the warm execution left her atypically flustered.

  Eyes flashing with intoxicating mischief, he held both hands up in mock surrender – no doubt at the glare that was emanating loud and clear from her.

  ‘Get the hell away from here,’ she said, taken aback by her rarely incited breathlessness. ‘Away from The Circus. Because if anyone finds out I helped you, even spoke to you, especially Pummel, you’ll be dead before dawn. And if I see so much of a glimpse of you again, I’ll be the one to make sure it happens. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘I think I’ve worked enough out for myself,’ he said as he sauntered back across to where he’d been lying.

  She reached for the key in her pocket, turned her back on him, struggled to get it in the lock precisely at first as she silently pleaded he wouldn’t approach her again.

  Thoughts of killing him swam in her head. It was the only way to be sure; the only way to safeguard herself. But he had backed off. More so, he seemingly had no intention of pursuing her as he instead bent over to collect his bottle.

  Finally getting the key in the lock, she untangled the padlock. She looked back to see him wink at her as he took a mouthful of water. A wink that, without doubt, would be his death sentence if Pummel ever saw it.

  But it was a wink that also reminded her she had started the snowball by saving him. A wink indicating that, as a result, he was intending to play ball. Both would make his blood on her hands even less palatable should she choose to do an about-turn on him. Because she was not a monster like them. She would not become a monster like them. Not if the wink was his goodbye, maybe even a thank you.

  Stomach knotted, she shoved open the mesh door. She marched back down the dark alley, leaving the door open behind her, avoiding the compulsion to look over her shoulder.

  She strode past the rest of the storage rooms, squeezed through the V gap in the wall before pushing aside the boards and climbing back through the window. Passing the abandoned furniture and other miscellany in the dumping ground of a room, she made her way up the wooden steps. Only this time she clutched onto the handrail to aid her ascent, her legs feeling unusually unsteady. She stopped in the tiny stairwell at the top for a moment, composing herself before unlocking the door.

  The oppression of smoke, sweat and sex filled the air as she jostled her way back along the hallway. Toxic scents that had consumed her so-called home for decades; the laughter, cursing, groans, thudding music and screams the long-standing soundtrack to what was now her inescapable life.

  She headed back towards the more isolated end of the row of Pummel’s territory, to the stairs that would take her up to the privacy of her attic room, thoughts of her having made a mistake in letting the stranger go playing over and over in her head.

  She lifted her fingers to her lips. His had been so warm – surprisingly soft despite their firmness. The fact he had dared to kiss her made her stomach flip again, let alone that he had been so unapologetic with it. The rush had been as intense as the touch of his hand – a rush that flooded her again at the recollection. She’d been prepared for anything else, would have been staring down at his dead body for anything else, but a kiss was the last thing she’d expected. A kiss that had created sensations she had the feeling would linger for hours, if not days. And she wondered if her lips had trembled then like they did now; if he would have noticed.

  Not that it mattered. Not that any of it mattered. He was gone.

  ‘Where have you been?’ a familiar voice demanded.

  She flinched as Pummel’s chubby hand grabbed her upper arm from behind just as she was only a matter of feet from turning right up the stairs. Her attention snapped to his semi-wrinkled grey eyes, his faint eyebrows lowered. His shaven, balding head glimmered in the muted artificial light, the strained veins in his thick neck drawing attention to the mallet tattooed there.

  ‘I needed some air.’

  ‘There was trouble behind the courtyards last night,’ he said, leading her past the foot of the stairs and across to the exclusive lounge. ‘Grayson and Tracker are dead – necks broken. Three others are a mess. Got to have been a third species.’

  It was an easy conclusion to make – let alone accurate. But she’d been sure that the method she’d used had left options wide open beyond her.

  ‘I don’t want you wandering too far until I know more,’ he added.

  Which meant her stranger had not yet been found. But if Pummel already had his crew out there, she could only hope he’d hightailed it as soon as she’d left. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

  He kept a grip on her as he led her into the large lounge, the true sense of its size reduced by the claustrophobia created from the dark and heavy curtains to the left that permanently stayed closed over the bay window. This was where others came to do deals with Pummel away from prying eyes. This was where Pummel and his crew hung out when they weren’t out handling business, namely Pummel’s empire, on the streets of the south side of Blackthorn.

  She took her assigned seat in the sofa chair that sat parallel to Pummel’s sofa – his one of three doubles that sat in a messy horseshoe. This was where she sat alone night after night, her back to those curtains, to the world outside, trying to drown out their plans, their feats, the profanity, the gut-churning tales of violence and brutality and degradation, let alone the ones that were occasionally played out in front of her during one of their “entertainment” sessions.

  But tonight was quiet. With little other than the low hum of voices from those who had earned their place in Pummel’s crew and who sat in clusters chatting over cards and drinks and joints, even the clink of the pool table to her far left could be heard merging with the drone.

  Regardless, she pulled her earphones out from the side of the sofa as she always did. Only this time she didn’t turn the music on. This time she needed to listen.

  During their two-hour conference, amidst the toing and froing of verbal reports brought back to Pummel, there was no mention of any leads – and no mention of their finding the stranger.

  A paradox of relief and a crushing sense of disappointment entwined inside as she crossed her legs up on the seat and rested a half-read novel in her lap. And with Pummel’s conversation gradually teetering off to other events, she turned up her music and started to read. But the words were nothing but letters without meaning, the distraction of what had happened between her and the stranger still too intense to brush aside yet, the recollections still as vivid as if he were still there with her as she kept flashing back to his kiss, his touch, the potential of the body that had closed in on her. Feelings that grew and intensified to the point where she had to look away from the jumble of letters in front of her.

  Instantly her attention snapped to the right-hand side of the room, to the open doorway. Her stomach flipped. Her chest burned.

  He was leaning casually against the doorframe like he owned the place – her handsome stranger who wasn’t going to stay handsome for much longer if Pummel looked up and noticed.

  More intrepidly, he gave her a hint of a smile as if confirming, and enjoying, the dark secret held between them.

  She silently cursed and glanced anxiously across at Pummel who was fortunately still locked in conversation around the alcohol and drug-strewn table. She warily looked back at the stranger again – sent him a guarded glare in the hope he’d take the hint, relying on whatever false sense of connection had been evoked by the rarity of what had happened between them.

  But instead of backing away, he fleetingly raised his eyebrows just a fraction above his unflinching gaze. Worse, whatever was in his closed mouth, he was flipping it over and over with his tong
ue as if in contemplation.

  If she moved, she would recapture Pummel’s attention. But if she stayed, and if the stranger approached her, tonight was about to get even bloodier than the one before.

  And then Pummel would have questions. Questions that could jeopardise the only semblance of freedom she had left. Freedom she needed.

  This was not how it was supposed to work out.

  Anger crawled through her veins that the stranger wasn’t only risking himself, but her too. She wanted to march over, shove him away from the door, demand why he’d ignored her advice; frustrated at his arrogance, his ignorance of being seconds away from dicing with one of the most lethal cons in Blackthorn.

  She glanced nervously back at Pummel. And this time her heart plummeted to see his narrowed grey eyes had now locked on the stranger, the flame burning down his match as he held it poised against the joint resting between his chunky lips.

  Her only relief was that the stranger had the sense to no longer be looking at her.

  That relief was only momentary though when she saw that, instead, he was staring back at Pummel – directly into his eyes.

  3

  It was a gamble calling her bluff by turning up so blatantly. But for someone who had saved his life, who had let him go when she could have kept him trapped down in the lock-up, let alone who had reacted with shock and not a punch when he had kissed her, it was a calculated bluff.

  Coming face to face with her so soon on arrival had been an unexpected turn of events and, having seen her in action, knowing he was lucky to still be alive, Eden had had to restrain every sense of urgency in order to stay that way. He’d backed off when he’d needed to in the lock-up – when he’d had to, or face losing her completely.

  Now it was about getting close to her again. Because, as he stood watching her from the doorway, it wasn’t just what he had witnessed in the alley, or the clues he’d ascertained in the lock-up: her proximity to Pummel left him in no doubt she was the one.

  A proximity that could also mean she knew something about crates he’d seen taken in there.