Most Wanted - A Fantasy Romance Novel (The Shadow Blade Series) (9 page)

‘Ten thousand,’
Ariel admitted, putting her hands on her hips and staring at him defiantly as
though daring him to judge her.

From the way she
was grimacing he could guess it wasn’t a friend she owed it to. Had to be a
moneylender then. There were a few underworld moneylenders Jax knew of,
including a particularly nasty Chameleon demon called Rasa who operated over in
Cy’s sector. They would have taken her out by now but she was heavily
protected.

‘The ten
thousand I would have now if you hadn’t killed my bounty,’ Ariel added, glaring
at him.

Jax opened his
mouth then shut it again. ‘Who’d you owe it to?’ he finally asked.

‘No one you
know,’ she mumbled, grabbing for some empty beer bottles and carrying them
through to the kitchen. She dumped them loudly into the sink.

‘Are they
harassing you?’ Jax asked. He’d come up behind her and made her jump. He felt
her heartbeat amp and her breathing catch, a slight fluttering in her chest. He
wanted straightaway to pull her into his arms and refuse to let her go until
she told him whom she owed the money to. But he knew he’d probably end up on
the floor much like that biker had the other night if he tried a move like
that.

Ariel shook her
head hard at him, as if to say it was nothing she couldn’t deal with. It
frustrated him. Ten thousand was nothing. He could just write her a check right
now and get them off her backs.

 
‘I can give you the money,’ Jax said,
immediately knowing he’d said the wrong thing. He’d pressed on her Achilles
heel; her pride. She was fiercely independent and though he didn’t know her
well, he did know that. ‘It’s no problem,’ he added quickly, trying to make
amends. ‘I owe you. If I hadn’t killed that Sucker, you’d have it by now.’

Ariel’s gaze was
so full of fire that he felt burned by it. ‘I don’t need your money,’ she spat
at him.

Jax looked down
at his feet. Shit. He’d totally said the wrong thing. He looked up and nodded a
silent apology. Ariel stared at him for a beat, her eyes still narrowed, and
then suddenly seemed to soften. She sighed and brushed past him into the living
room.

‘Well, how about
I go with you tonight and help you bring in this guy?’ Jax asked, following her
and stooping to pick up a flyer from the table. ‘That should earn you what you
need, and it’s the least I can do.’

Ariel frowned at
him and at the flyer in his hand. ‘They already brought him in,’ she said, nodding
at the picture of a Scarab demon on the front of the flyer.

‘Oh,’ Jax
answered.

She sighed
loudly, brushing her hair out of her face. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I was just about
to go see my boss Jimmy, see whether there were any new bounties. He gets an
early heads up sometimes.’

‘Who’s Jimmy?’
Jax asked.

Ariel took a
deep breath, studying him with pursed lips. ‘He runs a betting and pawn shop.’

Jax raised his
eyebrows. That was news to him. He had thought he knew all the demon businesses
in the city. Clearly hanging out with Ariel was going to be an education in all
things demon.

Jax set the
flyer down. ‘OK, I’ll go with you.’

Ariel raised her
eyebrows at him. ‘You can’t just waltz into a demon hangout. You’re a Blade.’

He smiled at
her. ‘I promise I’ll behave.’

‘They’ll sense
you. You…’ she broke off, pressing her lips together.

‘I what?’ Jax
asked. What had she been about to say?

She looked away,
seemingly embarrassed. ‘You have a specific scent,’ she mumbled. ‘It’s very
noticeable.’

Jax cocked his
head, then took a step closer to her. ‘You saying I smell?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ she
answered, looking up at him unsmiling.

The truth was he
smelled like heaven. Ignoring his puzzled look, Ariel headed to the bedroom to
grab some weapons. Out the corner of her eye she saw Jax take a quick sniff of
himself. Smiling, she started loading up with saw blades and knives, throwing
on a shoulder holster and shoving her Browning 9mm into it. When she turned
around she saw Jax standing in front of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Shit.

Ariel strode
straight to the door. ‘You coming?’ she called, pulling on her jacket.

Jax turned
slowly away from the refrigerator to face her. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked, pointing
at the faded photograph stuck to the refrigerator door.

Ariel swallowed.
It felt like a wedge of splintered wood was stuck in her throat. ‘Saul,’ she answered.

‘Your
boyfriend?’ Jax asked, an the unmistakable tone of anger in his voice. ‘Your
ex?’

‘He was. He
died,’ Ariel admitted. There it was, out there. She felt instantly relieved at
having told him, realizing simultaneously that she hadn’t spoken about Saul to
anyone in years, hadn’t even said his name out loud in months.

Jax said nothing
in reply. He just stared at her for a long moment, his eyes clouding over with
an emotion she couldn’t quite decipher. Finally he nodded somewhat curtly and
headed to join her at the door. She busied herself checking her weapons trying
to gather herself. She didn’t want him to see any weakness in her. When she
looked up she found Jax standing in front of her, watching her. He reached out
and straightened the collar on her coat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.

Ariel glowered
up at him, feeling her body go rigid. She wasn’t used to sympathy and wasn’t
totally sure whether his was genuine. He seemed to be.

‘It’s OK,’ she
mumbled, grabbing her keys from the side and avoiding his eye. ‘It’s been eight
years.’

‘What happened?’
Jax asked as they headed down the stairs past the drug dealers who grunted
hello and stepped aside. They’d learned to give her a wide berth.

She waited until
they were on the street before answering. ‘He came with me one night out
hunting. He wanted to see what it was that I did. I think he was worried about
me.’ She laughed bitterly, under her breath. ‘I should never have let him come.’

Jax had come to
a standstill on the sidewalk. He was staring at her intently. Ariel stopped too
and turned to face him. ‘A group of Driller demons attacked us,’ she continued.
‘Saul was killed.’ She held Jax’s gaze. ‘He was human. That was my big mistake,
thinking that I could ever have a relationship with a human.’

Jax didn’t take
his eyes off her. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he told her in a voice that seemed to
brook no argument. ‘You’re not to blame.’

Ariel flinched
back in shock. Of all the things she had expected to hear it wasn’t that. No
one had ever told her that. She’d expected to see accusation in his eyes, not
sympathy. She’d lived with Saul’s death on her conscience for eight years and
had never once considered that it might not have been her fault. She didn’t
blame herself entirely – she blamed Rikon Fayette, the monster who had
sent the demons after her. But if she hadn’t been dating Saul in the first
place – a human of all people - if she hadn’t agreed to let him come with
her out hunting then he would be alive still. So it was her fault, wasn’t it?

She turned to
watch Jax. He had walked over to his bike and was handing over a hundred-dollar
bill to some skeevy-looking kid who Ariel guessed he must have paid to guard
his bike. Wise man. Around here a bike that flash was like a shiny bead to a
magpie. He swung his leg over the seat and then turned to her, giving her a
sad-looking smile. His expression was so tender though, and so conflicted that
it made her own emotions rise up, emotions she’d long ago buried and didn’t
want dug up. Damn him. How did he do that? Make her feel so vulnerable all the
time? She hated it.

She strode past
him, letting her hair fall in front of her face, shielding herself from his
scrutiny. She didn’t want him to see that he had touched a nerve. She didn’t
want him to know that those feelings existed in her, or that he had the power
to evoke them.

As they drove
through the night and the wind rushed in her ears, drowning out all other
sounds but Jax’s heartbeat and her own blood thundering in her ears, Ariel couldn’t
stop her thoughts from turning to Saul. He’d had been dead now for longer than
she’d even known him. Sometimes she wondered if she wasn’t holding onto his
memory as a way to punish herself for what had happened. If he’d been killed in
a road traffic accident or from some human disease would she still be clinging
to his memory in the same way? Would they even still be together? She didn’t
know. The undeniable fact was though that Saul had been with her that night.

She had been
stupid, just twenty-two years old, and had thought she knew everything there
was to know about fighting. She had believed she could keep Saul safe. Her
father had taught her well after all. But not that well it turned out. She’d
made plenty of mistakes in her life, not least letting Saul come with her that
night to watch her back, but the greatest mistake of all had been to fall for a
human. She’d vowed never to do it again and she intended to stick to that
promise.

Jimmy’s office
was behind a betting and pawnshop in an area that made the neighborhood Ariel
lived look like a private gated community in Bel Air. She got off the bike and
when Jax tried to follow her towards the door she pushed him back onto the bike
and told him to wait outside.

‘You want to
come back and find you still have two wheels?’ she asked, but really she was
more worried about the goons that surrounded Jimmy sticking a knife in his back.
And even more worried it had to be said about them demanding to know what she
was doing hanging around with a Blade.

It was a good
question. She was asking it herself too. More and more.

Jax glanced at
the flashing neon sign over the store and the heavy grille in front of the
window. He didn’t look happy about letting her go in there alone.

‘I’ll be fine,’
she reassured him, trying not to roll her eyes.

Before he could
argue she walked off, glancing once over her shoulder to look at him and make
sure he was doing as he was told. He was leaning against his bike with his arms
folded over his chest, frowning at her. Ariel took a deep breath and tried to
contain the assault of butterflies taking flight in her stomach. Her emotions
were still all over the place. She didn’t like the idea of having someone
watching out for her. What if something happened to him while she was inside?
But at the same time her stomach was flipping over, her skin warming at the
knowledge Jax was watching her. He was a Blade she reminded herself for the
fiftieth time. Yes, he was human, but he could also take care of himself. He
was not her responsibility.

She pushed open
the boarded up door and instantly all thoughts of Jax vanished, along with the
dancing butterflies in her chest. In their place she felt a spurt of
adrenaline. Her fight or flight responses were all firing and her muscles were tensing.

Jimmy’s was a
stink pit of testosterone, cigarette smoke and stale urine. Ariel walked along
a dark hallway until she reached a doorway on the right. She pushed it open and
was instantly deafened by cheers and roars. This was the betting lounge. At
least forty demons were standing around, watching giant television screens,
cheering and yelling at the cage fights being broadcast from another dimension.
Ariel caught a glimpse on one screen of a Saw demon going head to head with a Chameleon.
Who would bet on the outcome of a fight like that she wondered? The Chameleon
was going to win every time, they could blend into the background so were
masters of the surprise attack. Even more so than Shadows.

Ariel pushed on
through to the back room, plastic beer cups crunching beneath her feet, until
she came to the betting kiosks. Felix was sweeping up the discarded chits from
the floor in front of them, his tall, skinny frame slouching over the broom.

‘Hey Felix,’
Ariel said.

Felix looked up
at the sound of his name and grinned at the sight of her. She felt a kick in
her gut. She knew that Felix had a soft spot for her, some would call it a full
on crush, but the kid was just a kid, barely sixteen and on top of that he was
a Hecate demon.

‘What’s going
on?’ she asked him.

‘Oh, just the
usual,’ he answered, ‘you know how it is.’

‘Any bounties?’
she asked.

Felix was low
down on the totem at Jimmy’s, but he was a useful person to know because he had
eyes in the back of his head. Literally. He gave the term
two-faced
a whole new meaning. Thanks though to this undoubtedly
useful skill, he had cadged a job out of Jimmy, working the betting lounge, helping
collect the chits and handing out payments, or more usually, taking them.
Because he could see trouble from every angle, he was good at catching cheating
too and pre-empting any trouble.

He turned just
then and Ariel caught a glimpse of his other face, the blinking eyes in the
back of his skull, busy scanning the room, keeping a watch on the screens in
the corner. Felix leaned in closer towards her. ‘The Brothers just issued a big
bounty on someone. I was going to send you a message later, once I was done
sweeping. It’s six figures.’

Ariel nodded.
That was good news. She hoped she wasn’t too late. ‘Thanks Felix,’ she said. ‘I
better go see Jimmy. What kind of a mood is he in?’ she asked.

Felix shrugged.
‘Same as usual.’

Ariel stuck a
ten-dollar bill in Felix’s pocket and then turned to push her way back through
the crowd.

‘Good luck!’ she
heard Felix call after her.

 
Jimmy’s usual goon was standing sentry
outside his office. He was a
Shifter called Manu, who that day had chosen to take on the form of Vin Diesel.
Go figure. Shifters could only shift into human form but if she could shift
into any form, it certainly wouldn’t be Vin Diesel.

‘Can I see
Jimmy?’ Ariel asked when Vin made no move to step away from the door.

He finally
sighed. ‘Your funeral,’ he said, pushing the door open.

Ariel stepped
inside the room. Behind the desk sat a wizened old man with thick horn-rimmed
glasses attached to his head with a sweatband. A chewed cigar was wedged behind
his ear. His other ear was missing, giving him an asymmetrical appearance which
took a while to get used to. Rumor had it that Jimmy had lost his ear and three
toes in a cage fight when he was younger. Though looking at him now Ariel found
it hard to imagine Jimmy ever having been a cage fighter.

He still hadn’t glanced
up from his work, and she watched his fingers flying furiously, tapping out
numbers on a calculator. Ariel took a moment to glance around. Shelves and
cabinets lined the box-like room. The top shelf was weighed down with televisions
from every decade since their invention. Most looked like antiques. There were
also a number of dust covered appliances and gymnastics trophies. To her right
stood a cabinet full of random items including a fine set of gold candlesticks,
and a full set of cocktail glasses. Ariel saw her own ruby-hilted knife lying
beside the cocktail shaker in the cabinet and glowered. One day she vowed, she
was coming back for that .

Jimmy was a
hoarder. This was a well-known fact. The items in the room were the things he’d
held onto over the years, belongings that people had pawned and never come back
to reclaim.. Rumor had it that in one of the cabinet drawers he kept a
collection of severed digits; debt repayments when the owners failed to deliver
cash. It was part of the reason Ariel hadn’t gone to him for a loan. Though
Rasa had turned out to be every bit as unreasonable in the end.

 
‘Hey Jimmy,’ she said with a smile when
he finally looked up from his calculations.

He glared at her
and reached for his cigar. ‘What do you want?’ he grunted, sticking it between
his teeth and starting to chew on it.

 
‘Oh come on, cut me some slack,’ Ariel
said, trying for a winning smile.

‘What happened
with Ezekiel? Hmmm?’ Jimmy asked.

‘He kind of
died,’ Ariel admitted reluctantly with a shrug.

Jimmy leaned
back in his chair. ‘
Kind of
died?
Like that Chameleon in Montana just happened to sever his own artery?’

‘Mmmm,’ Ariel
murmured, glancing at the pile of flyers on Jimmy’s desk. ‘Not my fault.
Listen, they’re both dead,’ she said, reaching for a flyer.
 
‘One less Sucker on the street. One less
Chameleon scamming you. No bad thing.’

‘Don’t talk to
me about Suckers,’ Jimmy muttered with a sneer, leaning forwards and snatching
the flyer out of her hand.

‘Why?’ Ariel
asked.

‘You not heard?’
he asked, cocking an eyebrow at her. ‘There’s a plague of them.’

‘Yeah,’ Ariel
mumbled. ‘I had a little run in with some the other day. They’re immune to
silver, makes it hard to kill the buggers.’

Jimmy peered at
her curiously. ‘They’re some new super breed.’

Ariel looked up
sharply, shaking her head in confusion. ‘Has the virus mutated?’

Jimmy pursed his
lips. ‘No. Worse. They’re being spawned.’

‘Spawned?’ Ariel
asked.

‘Yeah,’ Jimmy
nodded at her, sucking on his dead cigar. ‘Spawned. These things ain’t made
from no virus.’

Ariel’s mouth
fell open as the pieces started to fall into place. If they weren’t being
infected with the virus, then they were being made. She still didn’t understand
though. ‘But I thought only an Original could spawn,’ she said. She didn’t
recall much about demon lore, but this was one thing she was pretty sure about.

Jimmy’s beady
eyes fixed right on her. ‘That’s right.’

‘But I thought
the Originals were all dead.’ her heart had started racing.

‘Would appear
not. The Brothers have issued a warrant.’ Jimmy waved the flyer in her face.

Ariel grabbed
for it, but he pulled it away. ‘There are half a dozen other bounty hunters out
there right now. They’re not going to be happy if I let you in on it too.’

‘If it’s really
an Original vampire, you’re going to need everyone you can get,’ Ariel shot
back.

 
Jimmy stopped chewing his cigar and spat
a puddle of dark liquid onto the ground at his feet.

Ariel took the
opportunity to snatch the flyer from his hand. ‘One hundred thou?’ she screeched,
reading it. ‘You gotta let me in on this Jimmy! Please!’ she begged. ‘I won’t
fuck it up this time. I promise. ’ Damn straight she wouldn’t screw it up. She
needed that money. One hundred thousand would get Rasa off her back and buy her
a ticket to Europe where Rikon was. It would buy her a fake identity and the
intel she needed to get close to him.

Jimmy eyed her
over the top of his glasses. ‘Sweetheart,’ he smirked. ‘If you think you stand
a chance against an Original, well good luck to you. And I’ll see you in the
next life.’

Ariel took that
for agreement that she could try. She grinned as she stuffed the flyer in her
pocket and turned to the door. She had to get a move on if she was going to get
to him before the other bounty hunters did.

Ariel was just
weaving her way through the riotous crowd of demons and hawkers in the betting
lounge when she felt someone grabbing her arm. She spun around, her hand
fisted, ready to throw a punch, and pulled back only just in time to stop
herself from hitting Felix in one of his faces.

 
‘Hey Felix,’ she said.

 
‘Hey Ariel,’ he panted almost breathlessly.
‘You going after that Original?’ he asked. ‘Did Jimmy let you in on it?’

Ariel nodded,
grinning.

‘You should know
that Aaron’s after him too,’ Felix murmured under his breath. ‘I just heard.’

Around them the
crowd jostled and Ariel had to dig in her heels to stop from being pushed into
Felix’s arms. Aaron. Ariel gritted her teeth. That piece of Shapeshifter scum.
Aaron had stolen more than a fair few of her hits. He was good. And more
arrogant than the devil.

‘What are his
odds?’ she asked Felix, glancing at the board on the wall where the names of
bounty hunters had been scrawled in chalk. She saw one of the betting guys, a
Spider demon with eight arms, etching her own name onto the bottom, then the
numbers
one hundred to one
beside it.
Bastard.

‘Aaron’s two to
one,’ Felix said, ‘He’s the favorite.’

Ariel eyed the
board. There were four other bounty hunters on there, all with fair to middling
odds. She was the outsider by a large margin. She scanned the list, recognizing
all their names. They were all good, experienced bounty hunters. Damn it. She
needed to hurry or she’d miss out. She started for the door but then stopped
and turned back to Felix, grabbing him by the arm.

‘Listen Felix,’
she whispered, an idea coming to her. ‘Would you place a bet for me?’

A grin spread
across his face. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘You got cash though?’ Felix knew the
situation she was in when it came to cash flow, had been there when she came to
pawn her father’s blade.

Ariel pulled a
face. ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘But come with me.’

She led Felix
over to the window, which was boarded up. Peeling aside a sheet of plywood and
rubbing her elbow across the grime coating the glass she cleared a patch and pointed.
‘There,’ she said, ‘Can you take that as collateral?’

Felix started
laughing. ‘Which? The guy or the bike?’ he asked.

‘The bike,’ she
said, watching Jax through the window. He was leaning against the bike still,
scowling. ‘Can you take it?’ she asked again.

Even as she
asked it she felt her heart start to beat faster. OK, it was wrong. It wasn’t
even her bike, but she had nothing else with which to bet and besides, Jax owed
her. Besides, he probably could afford five hundred of the damn things.

Felix tipped his
head to the side then nodded. ‘Yeah, we can take that.’ He paused though and
frowned at her. ‘Who’s the guy though?’ he asked.

Ariel sensed the
edge to his voice and noted the wounded look in his eye. She took a deep
breath. ‘Just a guy,’ she answered and strolled out the door.