Blood Shadows (31 page)

‘It was an accident, Kane. Arana was in the wrong place at the wrong time with lycans who should have known better. It was not a conspiracy. It was not a set-up. Do you seriously believe Xavier would go to that extent, murdering Arana just to get you on side? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘No, because having me seek retribution on the lycans wouldn’t give him all the evidence he needs that I’m out of control. Having me as a risk to the peace of the district wouldn’t give him all the power he needs to take me in and keep me in whilst he bartered with me for my freedom. Carter wouldn’t think to use the only thing I had left to care about in a last-ditch attempt to show me who’s in charge. Just as he wouldn’t send you in here as a spy despite knowing all of that.’

She shook her head, but her eyes leaked contemplation. ‘You’re paranoid.’

‘Are you going to add that to the rest of your infallible psych evaluation?’ He held out his hand. ‘Let’s have a look at your foot.’

She lifted it out of the water as if accepting she needed it sorted out, just to reduce the pain if nothing else.

He studied her sole now it was clean enough for him to see. ‘You’ve got a couple of nasty shards in there. We’re going to have to get them out.’

‘You need to get me to a hospital.’

‘It’s nothing I can’t sort,’ he said. ‘Get yourself warmed up and dried off and I’ll take them out for you.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘The sooner they come out the better.’

She stared at him. ‘You leave them alone, Kane. I’m warning you. Don’t you touch the people I care about or you are getting nothing from me.’

She believed every word she was saying. Those eyes staring back at him were not those of someone trying to cover their tracks. Caitlin hadn’t had a clue, and that made it neither the time nor the place to tell her the rest. It wasn’t the time to see the last of her hopes shattered when she learned she stood no chance of getting out of it alive. Because the minute she knew that, he knew she’d close down on him completely. And he had too little time to risk that.

He could take her anger and anything else she had to throw at him – it would make no difference.

‘You have no control over that heart of yours,’ he said, ‘any more than you have control over any of this. And the sooner you accept that, the easier this will be.’ He stood up, pulled a towel off the rail and held it out to her. ‘Do you want help getting out?’

She shook her head.

‘I’ll get some stuff together,’ he said, and strode back out of the bathroom.

Caitlin watched him pull the door half-shut behind him as he left. She rubbed her hands down over her bare legs. Her feet no longer stung, the warm water instead soothing now she’d acclimatised to it.

She had to stay calm. It would only be a matter of time before Max tracked her down and then it would all be over. She could ask Max for the truth in front of Kane. Because she would ask him. She wanted to look him in the eyes as he stared back in horror and bewilderment at the very prospect of what Kane was claiming. Because there was no truth in it. There couldn’t be.

But there had been something about the look in Jask’s eyes when he’d said it – something that chilled her. There was real anger in those eyes as if he believed it. And Kane was no fool. He was astute and perceptive enough to pick up on a liar and this meant too much to him to make a mistake. But she also knew how deeply he had loved his sister. Those kind of situations left someone demanding answers, actively looking for resolution and sometimes in the wrong place.

Of course Jask would protect his own. No one wanted Kane baying for their blood. But Jask had picked the wrong people for scapegoats. And her job was clearly more than just taking Kane in now – it was also now redeeming the name of those she loved. And if she could redeem their names, she might even be able to persuade him to help her. Help her before they took him in.

But she was kidding herself. This wasn’t about her surviving the soul ripper anymore. This was about surviving Kane.

She shuddered, the shock of it all still working its way through her body.

And everything she knew told her nobody survived Kane.

He was going to kill her. He was going to tear out her soul and kill her. The ones she loved would never have been capable of inflicting what happened to Arana, but Kane was. He was capable of duplicating that. And more. So much more.

Horror of her looming fate left her disassociated even from the bathwater she was sat in. Thoughts of the pain, humiliation and degradation Arana had suffered. Reading that report was the first time she’d ever thought death could be a blessing. No one was capable of surviving that and wanting to live. She hadn’t needed images – the lycans’ confessions had been enough. Seeing it with her own eyes would have tipped her over the edge. Just like she was sure it had tipped Kane over the edge.

He hated her. He hated the ones who loved her more. And there was no better vengeance than putting her through what his sister had gone through. Poetic justice. Kane style. It didn’t matter that he was wrong. What mattered was that he’d feel right about it.

But he wouldn’t feel right about it. He couldn’t feel right about it. Not when they’d been so intimate. Not after she’d felt the tenderness of his touch and the affection of his kiss. They hadn’t just had sex – even she knew that. There had been some kind of connection, on some level, at least on her part.

But the thought of him inside her, of her giving herself to him, when all the time he was imagining brutalising, torturing and degrading her made acid rise at the back of her throat, her stomach twist in pain.

She stared across at the door.

And he was out there, waiting for her.

She had to stop him. She had to persuade him he was wrong. She had to. She was not going down without a fight. It was not over yet. Max was coming. She just had to keep herself alive.

She eased out of the bath, struggled down the steps and wrapped the towel around herself. She slipped out of her soaking-wet dress and dried herself off before taking clean clothes out of her bag.

She hobbled back out to where he sat on the coffee table, a first-aid kit beside him. He indicated for her to sit on the sofa facing him and she did so.

He handed her a bottle of water before lifting her foot to take a look at it again. ‘I’m going to have to anaesthetise this or it’ll hurt like hell taking those shards out.’

As he took a needle and small glass jar out of the box, Caitlin recoiled, yanking her foot from his hand. ‘No way are you sticking that in me.’

‘You won’t cope without,’ he said, drawing the clear fluid back into the syringe.

‘I don’t care. I hate needles.’

‘Would you like me to pin you down and rip out the shards?’

‘No.’

‘Then give me your foot. Because they’re coming out whether you like it or not, Caitlin. You’re in agony and it’s not going to improve unless you let me do this.’

‘Nursing another of your many skills, is it?’

‘I’ve cleaned up a lot of wounds in my time – bigger and worse than these – so I know what I’m doing.’

She held her gaze warily on his. For all she knew there was enough anaesthetic in that syringe to knock her out completely. But if that was what he wanted, he’d just do it. The pain was excruciating and getting worse by the minute, and she knew that if she didn’t get it sorted out she was going to pass out anyway. Besides, the more focused Kane was on her, the less aware he’d be of what was going on outside. And she was certainly no use not being able to walk let alone fight or defend herself.

Reluctantly she lifted her foot across to him. She clutched the cushions as she watched him tentatively.

‘Look away,’ he said.

She looked across her shoulder and closed her eyes. She felt the needle go in and sucked in air, tears welling up in the corner of her eyes, her knee recoiling as she flinched at the pain, but he held her ankle tight. Her foot numbed quickly. She thought she wouldn’t be able to feel him pull out the glass but she could; it made her wince but what she was experiencing was no more than an uncomfortable ache. He dropped the shards into the lid of the box one by one before cleansing her sole again. His hands were gentle, his strong fingers working deftly as he applied antiseptic and finally a bandage to her foot.

She examined the attentiveness in his eyes, his glance at her making her heart skip a beat. She lowered her gaze again as he finished and tucked her foot up on her lap, rubbing it to encourage the circulation back in. ‘What are you planning to do?’

He pushed the first-aid box aside and took a mouthful of water, his gaze steady on hers as if deliberating whether to tell her. ‘In order to save your life, Max and Robert are going to go public with a confession of their role in the murder of Arana. They are going to clear my sister’s name and at the same time sully Xavier’s and everything your precious organisation stands for. And whilst that is happening, Xavier will be with us.’

‘With us? What for?’

‘So I can kill him.’

Her heart pounded. ‘Why do you want my soul?’

‘Because the soul ripper does. When I say they’re compulsive, I mean it. It’ll need to finish the line it started. If I get my hands on your soul before it does, I can get it to do my bidding.’

‘What bidding?’

‘Simple death is too good for Carter.’

She stared at him aghast. ‘You’re going to set the soul ripper on Xavier? Is that why you’ve waited this long? Because you knew it would come back?’

‘Seven years is a small price to pay.’

‘But how did you know about it? How did you know it was coming for me?’

‘There were a lot of questions being asked by agents around the district after your mother was killed. Max and Rob had a few private questioning sessions of their own. During their interrogations, it leaked out that they suspected your father had been killed by the same thing.’

‘They said they didn’t believe me.’

‘Seems they have a habit of lying to you, doesn’t it? Anyway, it didn’t take me long to work out what it was from the descriptions – astral body gone, soul not at rest. There’s only one creature that can do that.’

‘So, all this time you’ve just been waiting? If I hadn’t tracked you down, you would have just come and snatched me right out of my room anyway, wouldn’t you? You’ve timed all this to perfection.’ She frowned. ‘What a shame you’ve got the wrong people.’

‘Seven years, Caitlin. I wouldn’t waste seven years on a hunch.’

‘No, but clearly you have on a lie.’

‘Those lycans weren’t lying to Jask. And Jask hasn’t lied to me. If he believed in their guilt he would have handed them over to me, not encouraged them in to detainment. Resolution and justice is the primary objective of every leader. Like I said to you, we resolve things effectively our own way. He’d gain nothing by setting agents up.’

‘They didn’t do it,’ she snapped, shocking herself with her own vehemence. ‘To stand by and let that happen would make them monsters. And the people I love are not monsters.’

Kane held her gaze fleetingly then picked up the first-aid kit as he stood.

‘And how do you suppose you’re going to persuade Max and Rob to confess?’ she asked.

‘Like I said, it’s the only way they’ll save your life. I’m going to tell them if they confess, I’ll save you from the soul ripper.’

‘They’ll never believe you.’

‘That’ll be their choice. But I think they’ll take a punt.’ He stepped across to the kitchen.

Caitlin forced herself up onto her feet and limped across to him, clutching the counter as the light-headedness took over. She watched him put the first-aid kit in one of the cupboards. Her hands trembled. Her head ached. ‘And then you’ll kill me anyway? Is that how it’ll work?’ She stared at him in the silence. ‘Or you’ll let the soul ripper kill me. You can’t help me because you can’t kill the soul ripper because you need it to kill Xavier. And you can’t kill it afterwards because that will release Xavier’s soul – which defeats the whole object of you using a soul ripper in the first place rather than killing him by your own hand. There’s no way I’m getting out of this is there?’

He met her gaze fleetingly, not needing to confirm it as he stepped past her back into the room.

Caitlin’s heart ached, an empty void filling her stomach. He’d looked her in the eye with the arrogance indicative of him that he could still succeed despite telling her the truth, despite giving her every reason to close her heart to him again. But he had been right – it was something she had little control over. Her heart had been responding without her consent. Even then, when she’d never wanted to hate him more, she didn’t.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t.

She had to open her eyes. He was tending her wounds and disclosing his plight in order to further reinforce her growing feelings for him. He didn’t even have to lie and deceive his way to her heart, and that was his greatest triumph of all.

He was winning. Kane, who, if he got the confessions and brought down Xavier, would also single-handedly bring down the reputation and success of the VCU and subsequently the entire TSCD. There would be mistrust and anarchy. The uprising they all dreaded. The devastating consequences.