Most Wanted - A Fantasy Romance Novel (The Shadow Blade Series) (12 page)

She considered
his words. Was there anything in them? Was he right? Is this why he did the job
that he did? Because he could see the lives saved? It was just so difficult
though. Evil was a lot more visible than good, lives taken a lot easier to
count than the lives potentially saved. But Jax was right. She needed to stop
focusing on what she hadn’t done, and focus on what she had done, start seeing
things the way he did. Is that how he managed to be a Blade? Why he did it
despite the fact he didn’t need to? To save innocents? She could see the appeal.

She stood up and
swiped a hand over her eyes. There was no time for an existential crisis. They
needed to get out of here. Jax however was still hovering beside the girl, his
head bowed as though he was praying. He gently laid his hand over her face,
closing her eyes, and then took off his hooded sweater. Ariel watched him
carefully wrap it over the girl’s body.

She stood as Jax
lifted the girl easily into his arms, scooping her up like she weighed no more
than a child. Something caught in Ariel’s chest as she watched him cross towards
the stairs and start to move up them.

With a sigh,
Ariel bent down and hefted the Original’s head from the floor. Carrying it by
the hair she felt like Perseus clutching the Medusa’s head, as she slowly
followed Jax up the stairs.

At the top of
the stairs Jax paused to wait for Ariel. She was trudging up behind him,
carrying the demon’s severed head. Jax grimaced as she walked past, shoulders
slumped. She had taken the girl’s death hard. So had he but he had learned that
giving into despair got you nowhere. As he glanced down at the girl in his arms
and saw the peace on her face, he tried to feel grateful that she had died
before the virus could take hold.

For all Ariel’s
straight talking, hard exterior she was just as broken as he was inside. He
wondered what the future held for her. For him, being a Blade was less a choice
and more a necessity. Sure, it was his birthright, but he knew he would have
done it anyway given half the chance. The key was to focus not on what they
hadn’t achieved, but what they had. If they hadn’t killed that Original, how many
countless other girls would have suffered? It was the only way Jax could
reconcile his feelings and get up in the morning without giving in to despair.
He couldn’t focus on the losses and the failings but on the lives saved.

Ariel ran ahead
of him to the front door and pulled it open. Immediately he saw her falter and
take a step backwards. Jax paused in the middle of the atrium, the dead weight
of the girl in his arms, his senses snapping into high alert.

Over Ariel’s
shoulder, standing on the doorstep, he saw a little boy. What was a kid doing
on the doorstep of this house in the middle of the night? Straightaway Jax’s
breathing sped up and his heart rate spiked. It wasn’t a kid. Whatever it was
wasn’t human. Ariel seemed to know it too.

She rounded her
shoulders and blocked the doorway as much as she could with her body. Jax swore
under his breath. He guessed it was one of the other bounty hunters and that
they weren’t happy that Ariel had got here first. Holding the girl in his arms,
he wasn’t going to be much help. He glanced around for somewhere to lay her
down.

‘Too late,’ he
heard Ariel say, her voice whip sharp.

Before Jax’s
eyes, and much to his astonishment, the boy started to shimmer. He vanished in
a blur of shimmer and in his place stood a woman aged around thirty with dark
auburn hair and startling blue eyes. Jax stepped backwards, stunned speechless.
He’d never seen a Shapeshifter shift. Ariel had swapped the head into her left
hand and pulled out her blade.

The woman
narrowed her eyes at Ariel and bared her teeth. ‘He was mine,’ she said in a
quietly sinister voice.

‘Well, now he’s
mine,’ Ariel answered coolly. ‘So, if you don’t mind, we’ll be on our way.’

It was only now
the shifter looked up and noticed him standing in the atrium. Her expression
faltered, a question darting across her face. Her gaze flew back to Ariel.

‘Who’s he?’ she
demanded to know.

Ariel squared
her shoulders. ‘Just a friend,’ she answered gruffly. ‘Now, let us pass.’

The woman
surveyed him with suspicion. Jax shifted, glancing towards the stairs, ready to
lay the girl down, but without another word the woman stepped aside to let them
pass. Ariel stayed in the doorway, facing the woman as Jax made his way past
them and down the driveway.

Halfway towards
the sidewalk he looked back and saw the Shifter standing there by the door,
eyes still narrowed. Ariel was backing away, keeping her eyes fixed on her. Jax
felt a chill race up his spine.

‘Who was that?’
he asked Ariel as they laid the girl out on the back bench of Ariel’s van. He
was stupid perhaps to have brought the girl’s body, but he couldn’t stand the
thought of just leaving her there in the basement, perhaps never to be found.
No. He would leave her somewhere where she could be found, so her family would
know some peace. Though, looking at the bite marks covering her body, he
wondered if that was something they’d ever experience again once they read the
pathologist’s report.

Ariel tossed the
head to the floor of the van, buckled in to the driver’s seat and stepped on
the gas. ‘It was another bounty hunter. His name’s Aaron.’

It was a he?
Jax’s eyebrows shot up to meet his hairline. ‘How can you tell he’s male or
female?’

‘His normal
shift is male,’ Ariel answered, concentrating on driving. ‘He and I have a long
history. He’s a shithead. Thinks all the bounties in LA are rightfully his.
Hates it that a girl beat him to it. Just your average misogynistic, asshole man.
I mean
demon
.’

Jax laughed
under his breath. ‘Well, I think you showed him.’

‘Thanks to you,’
Ariel answered.

He smiled, his
eyes flashing to hers in the rear view mirror. She smiled back and his heart
kicked in his chest until she looked away.

Once they had
left the girl’s body some place where it would be found, Ariel planned to take
the Original’s head to Jimmy, get the money and then pay off Rasa. Then what?
She darted a glance in Jax’s direction, watching him in the mirror. He glanced
up and smiled at her.

She looked away.
She was feeling too much and couldn’t get a handle on everything. She still
felt guilty, sick with it, despite Jax’s words. A part of her ached to listen
to him, to recognize what he had said was true, but a bigger part of her wanted
to ignore it and to shoulder the blame. Why was it easier to condemn herself
than to forgive herself?

Ariel tossed the
head onto Jimmy’s desk. The wood splintered loudly.

‘Woops,’ she
said.

Jimmy was
sitting in his chair, the cigar hanging off his bottom lip like a pregnant
slug. He stared at the head for a moment, at the mouth stretched wide and the
razor sharp fangs still glinting with droplets of blood, before glancing up at
Ariel.
 
She saw his lips purse in
irritation. She guessed she’d just cost him a fortune and tried hard not to
smile. She knew better than to rub it in.

‘You laid the
odds,’ she said, shrugging.
 
Already
she was calculating how much she had made, not just from the bounty, but from
the bet she’d laid.

Jimmy’s eyes
glinted like a reptile’s and he stared at her unblinking. Ariel took a deep
breath and straightened her shoulders. ‘I killed him fair and square,’ she
said. Jimmy wouldn’t shaft her would he? Behind her she sensed Vin Diesel
lurking in the doorway.

Jimmy glowered
at her for a beat longer, before finally nodded over her shoulder. ‘Pay her,’ he
spat.

Ariel bit her
lips together as Vin headed over to the safe and yanked open the thick steel
door. Her heart was beating rapidly at the thought of getting her hands on all
that cash. She smiled to herself as he started to count out stacks of bills. She
wouldn’t need to hand over Jax to the Brothers after all. She laughed to
herself under her breath. As if she would ever have been able to do that to him
anyway. Who had she been kidding?

She pictured
Jax’s face suddenly, the expression he wore when he stared into her eyes, that
deep rift of sadness she sometimes glimpsed like a fault line running through
him, the way he scrutinized her as though he wanted to know everything there
was to know about her, he way he’d said her name when they were in bed
together, like it was both a prayer and a wish.

She swallowed,
arrows of heat racing up and down her spine, then shook the thoughts quickly
away. There was no way she’d betray Jax now. She didn’t fully understand what
her feelings for him were, but when she thought of him, when she looked at him,
when he held her in his arms, she felt a peace she hadn’t felt in years.

It was a shame
that she was leaving LA. She would miss him. Ariel held out her hands for the
cash. One hundred thousand dollars weighed a lot in loose bills. She counted
off five thousand and dropped it on Jimmy’s desk. ‘That’s for the blade,’ she
said.

Jimmy muttered
something under his breath. Clearly he hadn’t thought she’d be able to buy it
back off him. She stuffed the rest of the cash into her bag and then hefted it
onto her shoulder, the grin finally breaking free. She heard Jimmy mutter
something to her back as she left his office. She would find Felix and have him
take the money she owed to Rasa, then she would say goodbye to Jax, in a way
that both of them would remember for a while to come.

Ariel found
Felix in the betting lounge, sweeping up loose chits from the floor, along with
cigarette butts and fast food wrappers. There was still a big crowd standing
around, waiting for the second round of fighting to begin. A few Scarab demons
were over in the corner drinking beer, and a few others were muttering to
themselves as they counted their losses for the night.

‘Hey Felix,’ she
said.

He glanced up
and smiled eagerly at the sight of her. ‘Hey Ariel!’

She nodded up at
the chalkboard and waved her betting slip in his direction.

‘Jimmy’s mad at
having to pay out,’ Felix said, cutting a nervous glance over his shoulder.

Ariel frowned.
News travelled fast in this place. ‘Well, now maybe he’ll learn not to bet
against me,’ Ariel said, with a satisfied smile. She paused. ‘Listen Felix, if
I give you something, will you take it to Rasa? I’ll make it worth your while,’
she added.

Felix nodded.
‘Yeah, sure. I can take the tunnels.’

Ariel smiled
gratefully. Felix couldn’t just walk the streets. But he could get around town
using the sewer system. She handed him a large sack of cash and then another
healthy-sized stack just for himself. She felt generous all of a sudden. She
guessed that’s what being rich did to you.

Felix took the
money and slid it into the pocket of his overalls. Ariel nodded goodbye and
headed over to the betting counter to collect her winnings.

‘How much did
you make?’ Jax asked, staring at the loaded bag Ariel was hefting on her shoulder.

‘Enough,’ she
said, her eyes shining. She was biting back an enormous smile.

‘Enough to pay
your debt?’ he asked.

Ariel grinned
wide and nodded. The anxiety that had seemed to weigh on her, casting a dark shadow,
seemed to have lifted. He hadn’t ever seen her looking so relaxed. It was
something he could get used to.
 
‘I
paid it already,’ she said. ‘This is what’s left.’ She walked around to the
driver’s side of her van and tossed the bag of money into the back. ‘They put
one hundred to one odds on me,’ she said starting the engine. ‘So I made a bet
on the side.’

He frowned as he
climbed into the passenger seat. ‘You bet on yourself?’ he asked.

She revved the
clunking engine of her van and turned her head to look at him. Her eyes were
the clearest bottle green and he was momentarily swept away in them. ‘No,’ she
said, smiling at him. ‘I bet on us.’

Jax felt the
sudden need to reach over, tug her into his arms and kiss her, but she was
already pulling away from the curb.

‘So, are you going
to tell me now who you owed the money to?’ he asked.

Ariel kept her
eyes on the road. ‘A Seer demon called Rasa.’

He shot a
curious glance at her. ‘A Seer?’

She nodded,
sadness sweeping across her face.

‘What did you
need the money for?’ he asked quietly, sensing that whatever this was about,
was something big, something that defined who Ariel was.

‘I paid for some
information,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I was trying to find someone.’

His throat went
dry. ‘Who?’

‘Someone called
Rikon Fayette.’ She glanced over at him, her lips pursed, her eyes dark. ‘His
men killed Saul. I’ve been trying to find him ever since.’

Jax took that
in. ‘To kill him?’ he asked.

Ariel didn’t
answer for a while but then she nodded, keeping her eyes fixed on the road.

Jax brooded on
that news. She wanted revenge. He understood that need. He glanced at her as
she drove, at the chin she held so high and the soft curve of her jaw. Where
would that path for revenge take her? Away from him, the answer came fast and
sure.

A silence descended.
Dawn was breaking over the city and with it the energy in the van seemed to
settle to a low hum. Despite the fact Ariel still had a quest to fulfill, he
felt for the first time in years the sense that life was an adventure,
something to be enjoyed, rather than a never ending litany of killing and
hunting. There was something more to it now, something that made everything
else worthwhile. Maybe he could help her find Rikon Fayette whoever he was.
Maybe he could help her get her revenge and move on.

Glancing at
Ariel out the corner of his eye, he wondered if she felt anything akin to what
she had stirred in him.