Blood Shadows (9 page)

‘I know what I’m doing, Rob.’

‘But do you know what Malloy’s doing?’ he asked, taking a seat. Different apartment but same sofa and the same seat he’d sat in the last night they’d been together. She doubted he remembered.

She’d never forget.

She’d known something was wrong and she’d asked him a few times during the course of the night until he’d started to get irritable. He’d been getting irritable a lot over the few weeks before. She’d put it down to grief. Losing her mother had hit them all – her, Max and Rob. Max, Rob and her father had always been inseparable. Ever since Rob had been taken on as her father’s rookie, they’d got close. Over the two years they’d worked together, he’d become like a substitute son.

Her father hadn’t been alive to see them get together. It had been years later. Rob made his move one night after dropping her home from work. She’d been twenty-one and fresh out of college. He was already working his way up the VCU, determined to make her father proud. Max had become the head of the unit by then, a role everyone knew would have gone to her father if tragedy hadn’t struck.

It had felt like the most natural thing in the world that they would get together. They’d been friends. Companions. He was the only male she ever let close. The only one good enough to go some way to fill the gap her father had left. He’d made her happy. In many ways. In other ways, nothing ever would, but she’d learned to live with that.

Her mother’s death shook him as much as everyone else. Something changed in him after that. She knew he felt guilty – as if he should have done more to protect them. Max had been the same.

At first she’d made excuses for him when he’d left. When he’d told her he needed some time away. She’d felt the weight of responsibility on his shoulders. She’d recognised that he felt he’d let her down. And her father.

And then time away became weeks, months, years. For that, she’d never forgive him. And now he was back, trying to take away the only thing she had left to fight for. The very thing he should have been by her side fighting for too. But he was like Max and the others – telling her she was just imagining it all. How she wished she could throw it all back at him then and there.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked as she sat opposite him.

‘It means you have no idea what’s going through his head. You can read all the files you want, all the psych evaluations, every shred of evidence, but you will never really see what is going on up there. You think you’ll ever outsmart him again? All you’ve done is made him play harder. You’re dangerously naïve if you think anything to the contrary.’

‘Have you finished?’

‘You’re as stubborn as ever, Caitlin Parish.’

‘And if you seriously believed you could come here and persuade me to give this up, if both you and Max believed that, then I’m not the only one who’s naïve.’

‘You know what he does to people, Caitlin. To his own kind. To others of the third species. To anyone who doesn’t do what he wants, when he wants, how he wants. What he can’t have, he takes. Those who cross him get hurt, and so do the people closest to them.’

‘Which is why he needs to be brought in. And I’m going to do it.’

‘And you believe he’s going to let you inside his world? Xavier’s plan is ludicrous. Kane will use you up and spit you out. You have to know when to stop. You proved your point. You brought in Kane Malloy. It’s not your fault he couldn’t be read. Cait, you have to let it go.’

‘Did Max tell you he’s coming after me?’

‘Yes. And that’s why I want you to come with me. I’ll get you somewhere safe. Somewhere he can’t find you.’

Caitlin gazed into his eyes, noting the desperate plea behind them.

‘You don’t need to live here,’ he added. ‘Someone with your skills and education. You could be doing something else. Living in Midtown, Summerton even. You’re better than this place.’

Come with me.

There was a time when they had been the only words she’d wanted to hear, but now they only evoked irritation and indignation. ‘My job’s here. Or should I prove what everyone in this district thinks: that they’ve been abandoned – that even the agents who claim to protect them, who enforce the ideals laid down by the Global Council, don’t dare live here? In fact, why am I even justifying myself to you? Do you really think you can just walk back into my life and treat me like some damsel in distress not capable of looking after myself? I’ve stood on my own two feet for long enough, Rob. I’m not some dewy-eyed twenty-one-year-old flattered by your advances anymore. I sort my own problems. So, no, I’m not going anywhere with you, even though my life might very well depend on it. And you can tell Max the same thing.’ She stood up, holding her hand out for his mug, her glare locked on his.

Rob didn’t move as his eyes narrowed in resentment and suspicion. ‘Is it the job, or is there something more going on here?’

She felt a flutter in her chest at the insinuation. ‘Like what?’

That Kane was no longer just a mission? That going after Kane was a compulsion – a necessary compulsion for her own survival? That right there and then, Kane was the only one she knew of who could save her?

‘He beds women as a pastime,’ Rob said, looking up at her. ‘You know that. When he’s not murdering and maiming and torturing that is.’

‘You think I’m planning to jump into bed with him?’ She exhaled curtly, and broke from Rob’s probing gaze in case he should read into her defensiveness. ‘That’s one too many insults for the day.’ She snatched the half-empty mug from his hand and marched back across to the kitchen.

‘I’m not blind,’ Rob said, following her. ‘I know the effect he has on females – of all species.’

‘You almost sound jealous,’ she said, discarding both mugs in the sink. She turned to face him, her arms folded.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Is that what this is about? You pick the biggest, baddest vampire out there to make me jealous?’

‘Oh, don’t flatter yourself. What I mean is you thinking you can come back in here with any kind of claim over me. I can do what I like, so I will do what I like. And I will go after Kane Malloy and I will bring him in. And I’ll do it my way. I’m not that vulnerable, fragile thing anymore. I’m probably nothing like what you remember.’

He held his gaze steadily on hers. ‘You’re wrong, Caitlin. You’re exactly how I remember. You can put up all the front you want, but I can still see behind your eyes better than anyone. And he’ll use that. He’ll revel in it. He’ll turn you inside out and rip you apart because it’s what he does. You seriously think you can handle that? You let him in, and he’ll tear you to pieces.’

‘Like you did? He’s got the excuse of being a heartless vampire. What’s yours?’

Rob pressed his lips together as he stepped away. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out five pastel-coloured envelopes. Returning to join her, he held them across to her.

She saw a glimpse of her address on the top one. The stamp.

She took them from him. She flicked through each. All were addressed in his handwriting. All were to be opened on 16
^th
December.

‘I never forgot,’ he said. ‘I just never thought it right to send them. I didn’t want to confuse you any more than I had.’

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. She discarded the cards on the draining board and moved to step past him, but Rob caught her hand. The warmth of another human being should have felt comforting. The intimacy should have felt right, the familiarity reassuring. Instead it felt shockingly non-intimate. There was no spark and no surge of tension like she’d felt the moment Kane had touched her. It was non-comparable – the way Kane made her catch her breath in her throat, the way her body immediately responded to his. She looked up into Rob’s eyes and the barrier was almost palpable. She immediately pulled her hand away. When Kane had let her go, it had felt like a void. When Rob did, it was a relief.

‘Please,’ Rob said, gazing deep into her eyes. ‘Don’t do this.’

‘You asking me not to shows you’ve never known me at all. I want you to leave, Rob. I’m tired. And I have things to do.’

Frustration emanated from his eyes, his lips taut. ‘You’re making a mistake.’

The urge to tell him he was wrong and that she was right was overwhelming. That instead of insisting, like everyone else, that nothing was coming for her, he should have believed her. That instead of denying her claims, he should have been trawling the streets alongside her for answers. But confronting him with the truth now would have given too much away and nothing, absolutely nothing, was jeopardizing her plan to get to Kane.

‘We’ll see,’ she said.

Rob’s glower remained fixed, Caitlin’s barriers hardening with every second that passed.

‘Do you really think you’ll survive this?’ he said. ‘Do you really think he’ll let you live? Once you’ve given him what he wants, or once he’s taken it, he’ll kill you. You’re a willing victim, for fuck’s sake. You step over his threshold and you are his. Is that what you want? Am I right? Is it more than just the job? Is it him?’

The look in his eyes unnerved her – the amalgamation of jealously, anger and disappointment. ‘I want you to leave, Rob.’

‘There are better and safer ways to get your sexual kicks, Caitlin. I’ve seen enough females firsthand who thought it would be a challenge to slip between his sheets. You don’t come out the same person. He’s sick. He’s twisted. He doesn’t have limits. And you will end up doing whatever he wants you to do.’ He pressed his forefinger to his temple. ‘And he’ll get so far in your head, you’ll actually believe you want it. Is that who you want to give yourself to?’

She defiantly held his glare. ‘You don’t know me anymore.’

‘Been with anyone since me, have you?’

She exhaled tersely and moved to step past him again but he caught her upper arm, pulling her back against the counter before standing in front of her.

‘Have you remembered what it was like?’ he asked, standing too close for comfort.

She lowered her gaze, staring at the floor as she clutched the counter.

‘But I was patient. I loved you. I understood. I know how hard intimacy is for you. I know how hard it is to break through that barrier that protects you – your heart and your soul – from all those readings you have to do.’

She didn’t want to remember how it had been between them. She didn’t want to acknowledge it. How quickly it had all become difficult. How loving him like she did had made it all the more painful. The disappointment in his eyes, the failure she’d felt. Wanting to be normal. Wanting to feel something. He’d put the first time down to her inexperience. The second and the third, the few times after that down to stress, her expectations being too high. But she felt nothing. Nothing but shame.

And she wanted so much more.

But it had never got any easier.

And the last time they were together, the month before he’d left, when she’d turned to him as much for comfort as to be sated, should have been the most special of all.

Instead, she’d been left feeling hollow again.

‘That’s why I never wanted you to go into all this shadow-reading, Caitlin. It wasn’t just me being selfish. You were committing yourself to a life that was wrong for you. You deserved better. I knew it. Max knew it. Your parents would never have wanted that for you. Your father would go insane knowing what you’re about to do. You can’t handle Kane. And deep down you know it. And I can say that because I know you. I know you better than anyone.’ He caught her by the jaw, forcing her to look up at him, his blue eyes burning deep into hers. ‘Kane won’t be patient. He won’t be kind. He won’t tell you it’ll be okay. He is cruel and self-sating. He’s not exciting, he’s not challenging, not when he’s hurting you. Not when he’s making you cry. When he’s making you bleed.’

Caitlin pushed past him but he caught her by the wrist.

She tried to yank it away but he held tighter.

‘It’s not nice not being in control, is it?’ he said.

She glowered up at him.

‘Do you think you’ll be in control with Kane?’ he asked. ‘Do you think you’ve got him worked out?’ His eyes softened. ‘Walk away from it. Please. Don’t do this to yourself.’

‘Let me go,’ she said firmly.

The air thickened between them, Caitlin holding her breath as she stared him down.

Eventually he conceded and let her go.

As he stepped away, she sagged against the worktop, not knowing if she wanted to cry or lash out at him.

‘Max is worried Kane wants to use you to bring about the prophecy.’

She snatched her gaze back to his. Her heart thudded. It had crossed her mind, too, but she hadn’t dared say anything in case it convinced Xavier she was too much of a risk to go undercover after all. ‘You seriously think Xavier would let me do this if he had any suspicion that was Kane’s intention?’

And if anyone knew, it was Xavier. It was never spoken of officially, but everyone knew he had some kind of inside scoop. The Higher Order, ‘vampire royalty’ as everyone referred to them, had links with the Third Species Management Divisions across all the locales. Xavier seemed to have closer links than others though, if the rumours were to be believed. If Xavier had had any suspicions a shadow reader had played a role, he wouldn’t have supported her place in the field, let alone going after Kane.