Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) (40 page)

‘You
dare
to fucking threaten
me
?’

Jessie's attention flitted from Pummel to Eden and back again, the glares of both scorching each other’s with a gut-churning tenacity.

‘Do you dare to be so arrogant as to even contemplate saying no, Pummel? I don’t think your crew will appreciate your suicide mission, do you?’

Jessie glanced from Homer, to Chemist, to Tatum, their attention equally flitting between Eden and Pummel – the first time she had ever witnessed their shared alarm.

But then something distracted her.

At first there was a strange sense of disquiet. She could feel it in the sudden density of the atmosphere.

Then there was the thrumming – an almost flatlining thrumming that permeated deep against her eardrums.

The thrumming became like a heartbeat – a slow, resonating heartbeat.

‘Pummel,’ a voice called out from the doorway.

‘Not now!’ Pummel snapped, not yet having detected what she had.

Jessie looked at the con rooted to the spot in the doorway, his knuckles as white as his ashen face. ‘You’ve got to come and see…’ He stopped. His eyes widened further to the point he showed the whites of them as he stared across the room towards the pool table. ‘Shit,’ he hissed.

And all of them snapped their attention towards the source of his curse.

T
he child was stood
three feet in front of the pool table. With tendrils of fine black hair falling scraggily to her thin waist, her heavy fringe hanging over her eyes and covering most of her face, it was hard to determine how old she was. But, from her stature, Eden guessed her to be six or seven.

Her hands were loose by her sides, her feet together giving her a regimental appearance had her shoulders not been hunched as if she was looking at the floor. Either that or she was staring across the room, up through her fringe – a prospect that, in her stillness, only added to the menace of her inexplicable appearance.

‘Where the
fuck
did she come from?’ Homer asked with a wary scowl as he rose from his seat the same time as the others.

Eden glanced across at Jessie to see she was stood alongside Pummel, his fist gripping her upper arm as if ready to use her as a shield.

But adding to his unease was the way Jessie was frowning at the figure. Worse was the wariness in her eyes as if she understood what was going on. Despite her fixed attention though, she wasn’t so distracted as to not sense Eden looking at her.

Her gaze snapping to meet his. ‘Run,’ was all she mouthed.

But he was going nowhere without her.

‘That’s what I came to tell you. There’s more of them. They came from nowhere,’ the con who had barged through the door explained. ‘Dobe threw a bottle at one of them – it went straight through her. What the fuck are they, Pummel?’

‘More to the point, what the fuck is she looking at?’ Homer demanded.

They all followed the direction of the child’s gaze.

‘Tatum,’ Chemist said from beside her, almost stumbling over the coffee table, tripping over Homer and Eden’s feet as he backed away from her.

Tatum glared across at him before looking back at the figure, until she too took a wary step back.

Eden’s first thought was that the child was a ghost. In all the research, their existence had never been proven but, based on the calibre of the so-called human beings in the room, if this was a ghost, he had a feeling its presence was all about revenge.

‘Hey!’ Pummel called across the room to it.

But the child didn’t move.

‘I’m fucking talking to you!’ he yelled.

Feeling a chill at the back of his neck, seeing the look in Jessie’s eyes as she looked beyond his shoulder, Eden turned around to see there was another almost identical figure now stood in the corner of the room near the door.

It was stood in exactly same position with the exact same hunched shoulders and lowered head, resonating the same eerie stillness. At first he thought it was looking at him, but realised it was looking at Chemist.

Chemist who was already backing towards that very door before flinching on seeing it.

‘Fuck,’ Chemist hissed on a whisper as he took a wary step back from that direction too. ‘Is that thing looking–’

A split second later,
everyone
flinched.

The creature staring at Chemist lunged forward, tiny feet pattering frantically on the floor as if on a treadmill that wasn’t going anywhere. Its hair blew back from its eyes to reveal black canyons where eyeballs should have been, a toothless mouth gaping as it screamed. But it wasn’t any earthbound scream. And the deep resonance within its tone, let alone the wrinkled almost leathery face that was now exposed, had anything but childlike qualities. Neither did the force with which it knocked Chemist flat on his back on the ground, the other one simultaneously doing the same with Tatum, its tiny body pinning her down with ease.

Everyone instinctively backed away.

The con who had entered the room hightailed it straight back out of the door. Beyond it, beyond the arch, chaos was ensuing – yells, screams, the banging of doors, the smash and collision of furniture.

Whatever they were, there were more of them. Many more.

Letting Jessie go, Pummel grabbed a nearby chair and swiped at the creature, Homer attempting the same with the one that pinned down Chemist. But the chairs went straight through them.

Tatum and Chemist lay there transfixed, their bodies juddering, eyes wide and helpless as the creatures held them down, as they held their gaping mouths over theirs. They were changing: second by second, Tatum’s and Chemist’s skin was shrivelling, their eyes sinking, their hair greying. They were
aging
. Whatever the creatures were doing to them, it was as if they were drawing the life force out of them with every second that passed.

Pummel stared at Homer. Their exchange said it all. Pummel grabbed a hold of Jessie again, dragging her across the room towards the door.

Eden knew he had to let him. He knew where he was taking her. Pummel was bailing ship – and logic dictated he’d be taking the necklace with him.

From Jessie’s lack of fight, the look in her eyes as she captured Eden’s for a split second, she’d worked it out too.

Giving it less than thirty seconds, keeping a watchful eye on the creatures that then, for some reason, vanished again, he headed to the door.

But Homer had other plans.

Homer came at him from behind, wrapping his arm around his throat just as he reached the foot of the stairs.

Eden threw him forward over the top of him, smashing him to the floor, surprising even himself with how easily he had done it.

Homer rolled onto his stomach, clambered back like a crab before stumbling to his feet. ‘You’re dead, Reece,’ he said. ‘I want you to know that. We know about Dice. We found him.’

‘He got lucky. It was swift, easy and relatively painless – none of which he deserved.’

The indignation in Homer’s eyes at the confirmation someone had dared to kill one of the crew grated deep in his gut – as if some kind of injustice had been served, his obliviousness to the hypocrisy of his righteous anger the last thing Eden had the patience to deal with.

‘But I’m not going to make this quick for you,’ Homer declared. ‘I want you to know that bitch is ours now. And before we kill you, you’re going to watch every nasty little thing we do to her. I am going to hurt her
so
bad.’

Eden exhaled tersely. ‘You’re not even going to look at her again. Lucky for you though, I don’t have time to waste. You’re going down in the first, Homer.’

But Homer came at him regardless, taking a swipe.

Eden blocked it before it made impact and retaliated with a sharp punch to the stomach that was guaranteed to make Homer bend over double. Homer fell to his knees with the force of the impact, one hand flat on the floor, the other clutching his chest. Eden used the opportunity to kick him hard in the face, knocking him out cold.

But Homer was no longer breathing, the impact of his head on the wooden stairs betrayed by the trickle of dark blood dripping onto the next step down.

Eden stared at him for a moment, not having remembered kicking him
that
hard.

It had been effortless. He glanced around. Everything was sharp, piercingly sharp, as if the rush of adrenaline had attuned him somehow. The sound around him felt louder, the hurried footsteps rumbling beneath his feet where anyone who was planning on evacuating the building was already pushing and shoving their way out of the doors. He couldn’t tell how many creatures had invaded the place in total, but from the chaos that still echoed back towards him, they were appearing all over the place. And at the top of the stairs, beyond Pummel’s closed bedroom door, he could hear Jessie’s voice – something that should have been an impossibility over the background noise.

It was the confirmation he’d needed.

He’d already suspected why she’d been so reluctant to share the truth about her tears.

Now he truly understood why Sirius wanted them.

‘Just a drop,’ Cass had said to him that night. Whilst sitting astride him, she’d run the tube tauntingly up and down his naked chest.

‘What is it?’ he had asked.

‘Just a little something to give us an extra kick.’

‘I’m not putting that in my mouth.’

She’d slid it down to his ready hardness. ‘It’ll keep you going for hours.’ She’d looked back into his eyes as she’d bitten into her painted bottom lip, flashing him that wicked grin. ‘You’ll feel more too.
Much
more. I think you’ll like it,’ she had said, running her hand down over his biceps. ‘I think
I’ll
like it.’

‘And I’m not swallowing any shit that lab of yours produces.’

‘How about if I tell you it’ll also give you an added edge in your job?’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

Even in her drunken state, she’d seemed to realise she was saying too much.

He hadn’t questioned her about it again.

Now, Eden ploughed up the stairs with effortless ease, reached for the handle to Pummel’s room, twisted it to find it locked. He shoved at it with his shoulder before stepping back to kick once and then twice. The wood splintered under the force of his new strength, the door ricocheting back at him until he slammed his palm up to stop it as he stood at the threshold.

Jessie stood with her back to the wall to his left.

Pummel had yanked away the chest of drawers from the wall directly ahead. There was a hole in the thin plasterboard behind it, revealing a crevice inside. A box now lay open on the floor.

He spun to face Eden, something dangling from his hand: a vial on the end of a silver chain, the ruby-red contents glinting in the moonlight.

‘I’m going to be wanting that,’ Eden declared, slamming the door behind him, doing what he could to ensure that no one, or nothing, could sneak up behind him.

Pummel draped the vial around his chunky neck. He rotated his shoulders, preparing for the fight. ‘Well, you’re not getting it.’

‘We both know that, one way or another, I am.’

‘You’re a fool, Eden,’ he said. ‘Do you really think there is anywhere you can hide from me?’

‘You forget you’ve got to be alive and kicking to be looking.’

Pummel laughed. ‘You can’t touch me. You do know that, don’t you? She’s not just helpless against hurting me; she’s obliged to intervene if I’m under threat. You come after me and she’s going to have to kill you, or she’s going to die right on that spot.’

He snatched his gaze to Jessie, the troubled look in her glossy eyes ripping through him. Eyes that confirmed Pummel was telling the truth.

‘In fact,’ Pummel declared. ‘I could kill you right now and there is
nothing
she can do about it. And I
will
kill you.
Eventually
. You need to know that weekly dose of magic blood she gives me doesn’t just keep me young and beautiful – it gives me an added edge too.’

‘Don’t you worry about me,’ Jessie said, recapturing Eden’s gaze. ‘You do what you have to.’

Pummel shot an alarmed glance at Jessie. ‘Are you fucking stupid?’

‘Eden,’ Jessie said, not letting her gaze relinquish from his for a moment. ‘I can handle this. Do it.’

He’d asked her to trust him. Now, as he looked into those eyes that urged him to believe her, to act, he knew he had to trust her too.

Eden switched his attention back to Pummel; Pummel who suddenly looked uncharacteristically anxious.

J
essie flattened
her palms against the wall as she braced herself. It was going to take all her strength not to intervene, to overcome the power that physically
forced
her to intervene.

She was back in the room that first night Pummel invaded; when she’d been in the lock-up only to sense something was wrong. And she’d run across from the alley, up the stairs to that very bedroom – the bedroom that had once been Toby’s.

To give her added courage, she focused on the floor where Pummel had slit his throat in front of her decades before.

She glared back at him like she had that night. Because there was
no
way she was going to protect him. Whatever inexplicable laws, whatever act of nature or preternatural control governed the rules, there was
no
way she was going to hurt Eden.

Fists flayed as Pummel charged at Eden first, slamming him against the wall. Pummel fought with vigour, enhanced by Jessie’s blood in his system.

The pain hit almost instantly. She slid down the wall, clutching her head, the shooting pains even worse than those of the visions.

Eden clearly had the edge. Not just in fitness, in technique, in age, but with the gift of her tears, there was no way he was going to be defeated. Tears Pummel had never known the power of. Tears she had never shared with him. Tears she thought she would never have shared with anyone.

They rolled onto the floor, Pummel’s vicious punches being met by Eden’s equally brutal ones.

The draw towards the fight was like being sucked towards a black hole, an invisible wind pushing her from the wall. She turned to face it, her palms, her face, flat to it, like being stood on the edge of a precipice during heightening winds.

Discomfort coiled itself around her lower limbs, that same invisible force now tugging her away from the wall that she was desperate to cling to; her head burned, her vision blurring, perspiration washing her palms.

She fell forward with the force, her clenched hands slamming to the floor. She slid backwards as if being dragged towards the battle as Eden gained the upper hand.

She clawed herself back to the wall, her nails scraping against wood as the hurricane that would be inaudible to them billowed against her ears. She could no longer feel her legs, the pain in her spine unbearable, her skull clamping down on her like a retracting iron helmet.

But she would not give in. She would not ease the pain if that meant turning against Eden.

Her nails created grooves in the floorboards as she clung on like someone had flipped the whole room upside down. She opened her eyes, looked over her shoulder to see Eden’s bloodied fist pounding into Pummel. That Pummel had fallen limp beneath him.

She could barely breathe, the air squeezed from her lungs.

Only one thing was guaranteed: If Pummel died now, before ownership switched, she died with him.

‘Stop!’ she cried out. ‘Eden,
please
. Stop!’