Blood Shadows (44 page)

Because, tough though she may be, fiercely resolute, irritatingly stubborn, her vulnerability overrode it all. A vulnerability that had never been more apparent. A vulnerability that he could no longer deny had entranced him since the moment he’d pinned her up against the wall in the corridor and stared into those milky-coffee eyes. Eyes that even then warned him she was going to break him and that she was going to change things – that she was going to make everything different.

And he’d suppressed it and fought it because his plan necessitated it. His plan could not have him falling for his target. His plan could not have him softening for one moment. And he would defile her and toy with her and destroy her to prove that point.

And he was going to succeed. He was going to succeed even after she’d saved his life in that cellar. Even after she’d put her trust in him enough to unfasten those shackles. Even as she’d given herself to him willingly for the dual feed.

Up until then it had all gone so smoothly. Even her escape had allowed him to get deeper inside her. Even in her distress, he’d seen the way she’d been looking at him as he’d tended her foot. She wasn’t used to being cared for. She wasn’t used to someone else picking up the pieces for her. And when she’d cuddled into him for the first time, he knew she wasn’t used to being comforted.

And he’d managed it – the guilt, the deceit. He’d managed his feelings. He’d accepted them.

Until that crucial moment. That moment she’d looked in his eyes and saw him. The real him. Looked at him with warmth and understanding and love. That moment she’d opened her heart and broke his. Until she kissed him without barrier and without refrain. Until, for the first time in fourteen years, he’d made a connection and felt a glimmer of contentment. Contentment at knowing her. The real Caitlin. Contentment he still felt watching her lying in front of his fire as if she’d always been a part of his life and always would be.

And he realised he’d lied when he said only one thing scared him. Nothing compared to this: the thought of being without her.

He’d felt it as soon as her hand had closed on his chest to force-read him. The sheer panic he had felt, not that his plan would fail, but that within seconds she would have been gone.

Gone by his hand.

It had only been three days of being with her. Three days of being close to her and she’d crumbled walls to parts of him he thought lost forever.

And as she’d looked him in the eyes and asked if he hated her, she may as well have asked him to love her.

But loving her wasn’t the hard part. It was sacrificing his love for Arana to be able to love her that was the problem.

The problem that chained him to the darkness that had become a part of him. A darkness that was too interwoven for him not to be ripped to shreds from its release.

He placed the pillows beneath their heads and he lay down behind her. In her semi-conscious state, she settled back against him, her head on the pillow beside his. As he interwove his fingers through hers, she languidly toyed with his fingers, running her thumb over each short nail in turn before massaging each of his knuckles.

He could kill the soul ripper as soon as it appeared. Drive the dagger deep into its spine and give Caitlin her soul back. Keep her there. They’d never find her. They could live out the next few days, even weeks, locked in his haven while he plotted another way to get those responsible.

And then she’d despise him when he succeeded. She’d be torn apart even more.

He had no choice.

He leaned forward and kissed her, eased her lips apart gently, his tongue meeting hers. She relaxed into his kiss quickly and easily, her soft, wet mouth accepting him willingly. He ached for her again, hardening in readiness again, but as she closed her eyes, her hand becoming lax in his, he spooned against her, holding her close.

She was asleep within moments, her breaths deep, heavy, sated.

He could feel the depleted strength in her, her deflated resilience because of her absent soul. She probably didn’t feel any different, other than being exhausted. But he could sense it. Like a lover sensed sadness or worry or anxiety, he sensed the difference.

He kept his fingers interlaced with hers, rested his head against hers as he stared into the fire.

She was going to hate him anyway, but at least it would be over quickly and painlessly. Hatred was essential if it was going to work.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

‘C
aitlin, wake up.’

Caitlin opened her eyes. The fact Kane had whispered it close to her ear unnerved her more than anything else. Unnerved her more than the fact the fire now lay dead and the room had turned icy cold. More than the fact the silence was more intense than it had been in the soundproofed cellar. She sat bolt upright beside him and stared at the figure stood at their feet.

If she hadn’t felt so angry she would have cried. For one split second, for that tiny amount of time, she thought her mother had come back. Thick, wavy hair cascaded around the vision’s shoulders, the floor-length nightdress reminding Caitlin when and where her mother had been the night she had been taken.

But it wasn’t her mother. Her eyes alone revealed it wasn’t her mother, because the eyes that glowered back at her were dark and cruel and lifeless.

The eyes of the soul ripper.

Caitlin gripped Kane’s hand, partly for reassurance and partly to curb her anger at the creature that focused on her.

‘Take it easy,’ Kane said softly to Caitlin as he handed her the book. ‘Don’t move.’

The soul ripper glanced at Kane. Its eyes were unreadable, but it clearly wasn’t bothered by his presence. Instead it snatched its attention back to Caitlin and advanced the few steps towards her, its jerky movements like jumps in a movie roll. It crouched in front of her, its face less than two inches away as it stared deep into her eyes.

Caitlin dug her nails into the rug, her trembling hand clutching the book to her chest as she forced herself to look back at it.

And, just as Kane had described, she saw herself upside down in the murky, fathomless pool of its black eyes, eyes that flicked to the book before staring back at her.

It retreated, more quickly than it had advanced, clearly disgruntled with what it saw. Its eyes snapped to Kane as quickly as its body did.

But Kane didn’t flinch, his sullen eyes unwavering on the creature.

‘Go and get on the bed,’ he instructed Caitlin.

Caitlin eased away from him, clambering back, not taking her eyes off the soul ripper as it watched her every move. But as it stepped forward to pursue her, Kane stood and blocked its way. It cocked its head to the side in what could have been mistaken for a nervous twitch, but it was clearly an unspoken enquiry that Kane understood.

‘You want her, you do my bidding first,’ he said, without so much as a quiver in his tone.

Caitlin’s stomach clenched, her heart pounding as she watched him fearlessly square up to the creature.

If it could sneer, she was sure she saw an attempt to. ‘You dare to command me, vampire?’ it said, drawing out vampire with disdain, its voice huskier than the feminine frame it embodied would have allowed.

‘I dare and I do,’ Kane said. ‘Do my bidding, sphariga, and I will give you what you seek.’

Caitlin couldn’t see enough of Kane’s face, but from the indignation in the soul ripper’s eyes, he was glaring right at it.

The soul ripper didn’t move, its stare melting into Kane in rage.

The thought that those eyes were the last things her parents had seen filled her with renewed anger. She had no doubt what form it had taken to appear to her mother and how cruel that would have been.

It drew its lip back slightly in a snarl, losing the feminine features it had stolen. ‘You took it?’

‘Yes,’ Kane said. ‘Do as I say or I will kill your prize.’

It leaned back in an unnatural bend, the wrath and, at the same time, horror emanating from its eyes. Whatever it was thinking, it believed Kane and it didn’t want to lose what it had come for. Namely her.

The soul ripper was quick. It drew a clear line towards Caitlin, charging at her with an unnatural balance, defying gravity as it leapt onto the thin ridge of the footboard in one easy move before pouncing in front of her.

She flinched and it snarled.

Then it withdrew.

Its head snapped towards Kane.

And it nodded.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

T
he soul ripper sat in the back of the car in the middle of the seat, its hands in its lap, its attention fixed ahead.

Caitlin looked across at Kane for reassurance and he glimpsed across at her, sending her a wink. She turned her attention back out of the passenger-seat window, trying to ignore the tension in her chest from having that thing behind her. The thing that had filled her nightmares for seven years. The thing that had murdered both her parents and was itching to kill her. The thing void of emotion because it felt none. It had one purpose and that one purpose alone had driven it to bargain with Kane.

Kane drove down the slope and along the length of the chain-link fence, before driving through the gateway into the wasteland. It was unnervingly still outside, unnervingly silent. Caitlin surveyed the warehouse in the distance, the dark, stormy clouds its backdrop.

He pulled inside the derelict building, his headlights igniting a stone pillar as they passed. He couldn’t have picked a more perfect location to enact his revenge.

He turned the car around and reversed so he was facing the doors, then shut off the engine and looked across at her. ‘Are you okay?’

She nodded. ‘This is where they did it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is this where you found her?’

He nodded.

Caitlin looked back out of the window and scanned the dark and murky expanse before looking back at him. ‘You’ve planned every last detail.’

‘I’ve had a long time to do it.’ He took his phone out of his jeans and checked the time. ‘Carter should be here any minute.’

‘What am I to do?’

‘You stay quiet.’ He held her gaze. ‘I mean it, Caitlin. As far as Carter’s concerned, you’re here against your will.’

She nodded and followed him out of the car.

Their doors echoed as they slammed each in turn. She strolled around to the bonnet and leaned back against it, Kane coming to sit beside her.

‘He won’t come unarmed, Kane. He’s not stupid.’

‘It’ll make no difference.’

‘What if he just takes you down?’

‘He won’t. He’s waited for this moment longer than I have.’

‘What did you say to him?’

Kane looked across at her. ‘What I needed to get him here.’

‘Do you really think he believes you’re going to give yourself up?’

‘All he’ll see is a compromise, but that’s good enough for him.’

‘What if he does take you down, Kane? What do I do then?’

‘You’ll live. Just soulless until they let me go.’

She frowned. ‘And what about the soul ripper?’

‘Everything is accounted for.’

‘Plans fail, Kane.’

He looked back ahead. ‘Not mine.’

Caitlin followed his gaze to the doors – to the distant sound of engines and tyres over shale.

Within minutes, a sleek black car pulled up, two vans lining up either side of it. Another larger van drove past them all and stopped to the right of Kane’s car.

The vans either side of the car opened. Four black-clad soldiers dismounted from each, forming a circle around Kane and Caitlin. They lifted their tranquiliser guns in perfect unison, aiming directly at Kane.

‘You sure better know what you’re doing,’ Caitlin whispered to him.

He looked across at her and smiled. ‘Have you learned nothing?’ He stood up from the bonnet, his attention focused on the car as its doors opened.

Three more black-clad soldiers stepped out, equally raising their guns. And, following behind them, was Xavier Carter. He strode forward a few steps then stopped about fifteen feet away, hands tucked deep in his long coat. ‘Hello, Kane,’ he said, a glimmer of satisfaction overriding the uncertainty behind his grey eyes.

Kane took a few casual steps towards him, the guns following his every step. ‘I see you’ve brought your friends.’

‘I’m no fool, Kane. You know that.’

‘I could take offense.’

‘I’d prefer you take it as a compliment.’

‘Have you brought what I wanted?’

Xavier nodded to one of the soldiers who in turn advanced towards the third van. He banged his fist on the door three times.

The lycans were led out in turn and, from their lack of fight, they were clearly heavily drugged. They were gagged, blindfolded, their hands bound behind their backs, their ankles linked by chains.

Caitlin glowered across at Xavier. Xavier who had handed them over so easily to the fate they should never have been facing. And, as he met her gaze, she felt sick with fury, more so at the glint of approval in his eyes as if she had done a job well.