Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) (16 page)

‘You couldn’t pay me enough.’

‘Because of your family? Because I know you don’t care about yourself, Eden. That’s why I’m making my offer all about
them
. Honey doesn’t get medical treatment at the moment, does she, what with being a Lowtown resident? In fact, I’ve heard it’s recently been withdrawn.’

Eden’s jaw clenched. He stilled the mint in his mouth, his gaze held steadily on Sirius.

‘I’m offering to put her top of the list, Eden. Not just that. I’m here to offer you the chance to get your entire family out of that slum. For good.’

‘
N
ot good
?’ Eden asked.

His sister-in-law looked liked she’d aged five years in the week since he’d seen her. She always looked so in control; now she was barely holding back the tears. ‘You’ve got to talk to him, Eden. I’ve given up trying to get through. He’s talking about going out on the streets and doing it illegally. If I can’t make him see sense, I’m going to lose them both.’

Eden pulled her close, letting her meld her soft body against his for a few moments, his arm wrapped protectively around her before kissing her on the head and releasing her. ‘Where is he?’

‘In the lounge.’

She caught hold of his hand and squeezed. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

Eden pushed open the hallway door, to be faced with the dark lounge. His brother sat on the sofa facing the silent TV screen, the images dancing like a manic mime.

Amanda crossed the lounge and took a left down the short hallway to give them some privacy in the tiny, two-bedroom apartment.

He stepped up in front of the sofa, facing Billy as he sat side-on to him.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Billy declared.

‘What the fuck are you playing at, putting Amanda through this, Billy?’

Billy’s gaze snapped to his. His eyes were red raw, the dark circles beneath pronounced against his undernourished skin. He looked like he needed a shave. He looked like he needed a bath.

‘I take it she told you they turned down the appeal?’ Billy said. ‘Inept social background they said.
Inept
. Her aptitude didn’t show enough potential. Neither did mine or Amanda’s. Too few contributions – like we can fucking contribute to anything in this shithole. Like I don’t try to find work. We have a citizen rating of 3.5. The cut-off is 6.0. She’s six years old, Eden. Honey is six years old. She hasn’t even started to live, yet they’re already telling me her potential.’ His hands shook as he reached for the sheet of paper contained in the envelope on the coffee table. He flattened it out before handing it to Eden. ‘That’s her,’ he said, pointing in jabbing motions at the array of numbers and letters. ‘That’s all she is to them.’

Eden scanned the list of numbers and letters that graded Honey, some based on tests of her but many more, because she was under thirteen, based on assessments of her parents. Beneath was the dotted line where Amanda and Billy were to sign to say they had read the assessment, had read the appeal, and had accepted the outcome. Ten days of not signing was automatically taken as acceptance.

‘I have to sign a death sentence for your niece, Eden – for my little girl, all because I didn’t get good enough grades and don’t contribute enough time to this fucking dead-end community.’ He knocked back a mouthful of drink. ‘Whereas two borders away in Summerton, even right next door in Midtown, some little girl is getting automatic access to every single treatment she needs without question, without assessment because, in the medical council’s eyes, she’s better, she’s more worthwhile than that little girl lying down there.’ He thrust his finger down towards the room where Amanda had disappeared.

Billy slammed the glass down before opting to pour another.

‘What you’re thinking of doing is insane,’ Eden said. ‘They will prosecute you. What will happen to Amanda then? To Honey? You’re going to leave them in this place alone?’

‘I’ll take the wrap. I’ll do the time. I don’t care as long as she makes it. And they won’t be alone, will they? They’ll have you. They’ll probably be better off that way. I see the way Amanda looks at you – the way she’s always looked at you,’ he said, knocking back another.

‘Don’t talk shit, Billy.’

‘Oh, come on – what girl I dated didn’t?’ He stood up and walked away. ‘You’re more than capable of giving her what she wants. What she needs.’

‘And you’re not? You think I’m capable of having a family? Of doing what you’ve done? Managing here every day? Bringing up a child
here
. A good kid like Honey. Keeping a wife. I can’t sustain much more than a one-night stand.’

‘Because you
choose
not to. Because that job has made you so detached you don’t know how to be or do anything else.’ He threw his glass at the wall and grabbed his hair, lowering his head.

‘You’re not going to do this, Billy.’

His brother spun to face him. ‘And you’re going to stop me, are you? You’re going to put me on twenty-four-hour watch? And what happens when you stop shagging that doctor? When she stops slipping you the extra medication?’

‘Amanda deserves better than this. So does Honey.’

‘Which is why I’m going to do something about it. I am not sitting here letting some bastard behind a desk shuffling his pieces of paper and tallying up his numbers tell me whether my daughter has the right to live or die. She is
my
child. She is not going to suffer because of this fucking system, because of who I am, because of
my
inadequacies. I’m going into Blackthorn whether Amanda likes it or not, whether you like it or not.’

Eden’s throat tightened, the distress in his brother’s eyes killing him. ‘The answer isn’t there, Billy.’

‘Well, I’ve heard different. I’ve heard of the underground people who can mix the same concoctions they do in the labs. I’ve heard they’ve found the cure using not vampire royalty but ordinary vampires. I hear that The Facility already has the answer but they’re just pretending they don’t, keeping it for themselves. And if that cure exists, I’ll do whatever it takes to bring it back here.’

‘You go into Blackthorn and you’re not coming back.’

‘You do. Why can’t I?’

‘Because I don’t go in there with desperation stamped on my forehead. You think even if this underground system
did
exist that they’re just going to hand this cure over? It’s a lie, a rumour, like everything else in this place to draw in people like you in situations like this. You sign up to be sired until they get you to the point that you don’t even remember why you went there. Or you get the human scum who claim they can get you in – only you have to lose your liver or a kidney and not least your home before they even communicate with you. Get back to being a husband and a father. That’s what your focus should be on. Because if you do this, Amanda will be left with nothing and your daughter will spend her last days without her father. Is that what you want?’

‘She’ll understand.’

‘At her age? All she’ll see is you abandoning her.
I’ll
find a way.’

‘Yeah, well maybe, just this once, I want to find my own way without my little brother to help out. Maybe for once
I
want to be the hero.’

‘And is that what this is about? You? You proving
your
worth? I can’t even imagine what those results have done to you, but you
do not
let them do this to you. You
do not
give this system what it wants. There will be a loophole and I will find it. You will keep control and be where you should be. You will keep that little girl happy and safe and keep hope going in that wife of yours who deserves more than this. You want to be the hero, then that’s what being a hero is – not selfishly running face first into the flames. I will sort this.’

Billy fought back the tears, sniffed harshly before rubbing his sleeve across his nose. ‘Like you always have. Like you always will.’

‘Whether you see it or not, I’m the expendable one here, Billy. You’re not.’

Eden pulled him close, letting his brother sob into his shoulder. He looked across at Amanda stood in the light of the hallway; she smiled and nodded in gratitude.

Once his brother had expended his tears, exhausted himself temporarily of anger and frustration, Eden let him go.

‘Can I see her?’ Eden asked.

Billy nodded, taking a couple of steps back. ‘She’d love that.’

Eden crossed the room to the hallway, past Amanda, simultaneously meeting her hand as she reached out for him. He gave it a reassuring squeeze as she squeezed back in appreciation.

He pushed the bedroom door open and leaned against the doorway.

The soft glow of the bedside lamp shone on her face and ignited her fair curls with a shimmer that made her hair appear silver. Honey always had the lamp on – afraid of the fights that went on outside. Fortunately they were four storeys up now, but Billy had put wiring mesh over anyway, just to be sure. After someone had thrown a rock at the lounge window, it barely missing Honey as she’d sat on the sofa, he’d had wire mesh put on
all
the windows.

Eden had paid for extra reinforcements on everything since. Billy had to go out for food and what fragments of work he could get for his own self-respect. But he loathed going out and leaving Amanda and Honey alone, fearful of being watched leave, of what could happen when he was gone. Amanda had always been pretty, though she’d long dressed down in case she had to so much as answer the front door. She’d been cornered a couple of years before when she’d gone out to get a couple of toys to ease Honey’s boredom. The group had tried to persuade her to enter siring and her reluctance had started to turn them nasty, until a couple of others, people in that district who still looked after their own, intervened. Fearful of never making it home again, she’d since stayed cooped up. Now that Honey had got sicker, she never left her side.

Eden did the longer hours, more shifts, to provide what he could so at least his brother didn’t need to put his life on the line when he went out there. He opted to live in the TSCD’s residential block in the headquarters’ grounds because they only took a tiny fraction of pay – nowhere near the extortionate rent private landlords charged elsewhere in Lowtown. He’d got the best accommodation he could for his family, to pay for what they needed, not leaving much left over, but enough to get by.

And he’d made sure he was the best at his job so that, for those times he messed up and lost it, when he reverted back to the reckless, temperamental, impulsive Eden he had been growing up, he was still too effective for them to dismiss.

Honey smiled the minute she saw her uncle, but her face didn’t glow anymore. There was no longer the rosiness to her now pale cheeks. She had always been small, like her mother, but now she looked far too gaunt for a six-year-old.

It killed him a little more every time he saw her, the sheer helplessness like a punch in the stomach each time he was reminded of the fragility of the human condition.

He’d felt it ever since their parents had died – how someone could be there one minute and gone the next. His and Billy’s mother was hospitalised after an attack on the far side of Lowtown. Their father, unable to cope with the guilt of not being able to protect her, took his own life with too many pills and too much booze. They still didn’t know if it was intentional or he was too out of his head to know what he was doing. In Lowtown there were few explanations from the authorities, no time given to proper investigations, resources low, time precious.

The last time he’d seen them both, they were dust in a metal drawer in the crem where all the other Lowtown residents were put. All he saw was that their father had abandoned them to fend for themselves – him and Billy barely even teenagers at the time.

Honey was just a kid too. Just a six-year-old kid born into a situation beyond her control. Because in the eyes of the authorities, her parentage made her a lesser human compared to the kids who played in Summerton, even Midtown. There, like Billy had said, she would have had the best of treatment, probably made it to go on to live a healthy and happy life – to have had choices and opportunities, to have breathed fresh air and walked safe streets. Instead, she was just another wild kid running around Lowtown with nothing to offer and nothing for the system to gain out of her; better to be left to fade away than be another statistic further down the line that pulled on resources that could better be used elsewhere.

He swallowed back the anger, the tears, the pity he felt as he saw her shift slightly beneath the duvet, her smile broadening a little more.

Every time he called, every time he went around there, the sickening sense of dread consumed him. The potential of look in his brother’s eyes or that edge to his tone that would drive Eden to risk them all by doing something stupid. But it was nothing compared with the way
she
looked at him. Because what Honey saw wasn’t a human being – what she saw was a superhero who made everything okay, who was out there on the streets every night keeping the bad guys away. And when the bad guys came close to the apartment, it was
him
her father called. It was him who came and saved the day.

And the hope and faith in her eyes never faded, no matter how scared she was, how weak, no matter the pain. In her eyes, Uncle Eden would and could
always
make it okay.

He folded his arms and raised his eyebrows slightly, before signing to her at the same time as speaking. ‘Why are you in bed this early? Shouldn’t you be drinking and watching late-night movies?’

She chuckled, sending him that wicked grin that, for a moment, suppressed the burn in his chest.

The deafness had been a by-product of that shitty district too. There had been a spate of a group of men, too smashed out of their heads to care, throwing home-made explosives at passers-by, just for the fun of it. One had landed a few feet away from Amanda pushing Honey past in the pram. The noise had left Amanda with ringing in her ears for days, her hearing never having fully recovered. It had blown Honey’s eardrums irreparably. She hadn’t spoken since that day. One of the doctors who’d managed to examine her for more than six minutes in the negligent hospital had brushed it aside as trauma.

She’d been four years old – three months after she’d been diagnosed with the terminal blood disease. Terminal without the treatment she’d since been told she was no longer viable for.

‘You laugh now,’ he signed, ‘but when you’re seventeen, you’ll be giving me a mouthful, not that beautiful smile.’ He stepped over to sit on the bed. ‘Are you attention-seeking again?’

She nodded and pulled her giraffe closer. It was a worn out old thing now – one she’d plucked from a market stall at a time before Amanda had become too scared to take her out. She’d snatched it before Amanda, or the stallholder, had had a chance to see it. Amanda hadn’t noticed it until she got home – had no idea which stall it had even come from to return it.