Vowed (16 page)

‘Kit!’

Dante’s voice is somewhere behind me, but I’ve got the edge of the knife pressing against the guy’s taught neck as I’m pulling his head back, exposing his vulnerable
jugular. I’m now very keen to kick his face in, because I hurt all over. Anger at being punched and hurt licks at me and I have trouble focusing.

‘Drop your weapon,’ I hiss at him, wiggling my fingers so they tangle further into his hair. ‘Or I’ll be forced to cut you.’

I feel him drop the pipe to the ground.

‘Who are you?’ I ask him. ‘What are you doing here?’

His Adam’s apple bobs against my wrist and, just to make sure he understands how serious I am, I lean a tiny bit closer against him and the blade digs in, just a fraction harder.

‘Jesus, they were right, you are nuts.’

I let out a laugh. ‘No, just highly strung. Who are you and why are you attacking me?’

‘They told me to come here and give you a message. They don’t want you here; you’re bad for business.’

‘And that involved you hitting me with a steel pipe?’

He’s in the process of shrugging but then remembers the blade under his chin and he stops.

‘They said you could handle yourself.’

‘Who are these
they
you mention?’

This time he does shrug and I press harder. He swears angrily in what sounds like Russian.

‘Telling you isn’t worth my family’s life,’ he says in English as he peers at me. ‘I’m just the messenger.’

‘Kit? What are you doing?’

I startle at Dante’s voice.

‘The guy attacked me,’ I tell him. ‘I think he’s with the drug dealers from the other night, when we met the estate kids for the first time.’

‘That doesn’t mean you have to threaten him with your knife, Kit. He’s unarmed.’

‘He was armed. Before.’ I scowl at the man. ‘He hit me with a steel pipe, Dante. I made him drop it.’

Dante exhales heavily and moves so I can see him. ‘Kit, he’s bleeding.’

I open my mouth to deny it but my eyes drop to my attacker’s neck and there’s definitely something wet and sticky beneath my blade.

I’m so close to the guy that I can feel his heartbeat kick up a notch.

‘Please,’ he mutters. ‘Just let me go, okay? No harm done,
devochka.
I’ll tell them you said you’d stay away and wouldn’t deal here any more.
I’ll tell them I beat you up a bit. We both win.’

‘They think I’m selling drugs?’ I ask him. ‘Is that what all this is about?’

‘Yes, of course. People like you and your boyfriend don’t come round here unless you’re recruiting for buyers. Or you’re cops.’ He gasp-laughs. ‘But
you’re definitely too young and crazy to be cops.’ He smirks. ‘Besides, the stuff we’re selling is
sweet
so no one will want yours anyway.’

There are sirens somewhere in the distance and the guy shifts against me as I try and focus on what he’s saying.

‘Look, let’s just think about this now. I told you what you wanted to know. You threatened me, I got a lucky swing in. Your boyfriend is worried you’re going to turn me into
fillet and the cops are coming. Someone’s definitely called them. Those sirens are for us.’ I like that he’s sounding panicked and that he’s trying to appeal to my better
nature.

If he only knew.

Dante’s watching me and even in the bad light I can see him evaluate my sanity and the situation we’re in. He gives me a slight shake of the head as if saying,
No, this
isn’t good, Kit
, and I wonder if he can sense the angry buzzing in my head, that this man dared attack me. After a moment to consider options, I lower my knife and step back, kicking the
steel pipe further away.

‘Go,’ I say to him, my knife still held ready. ‘Leave before I think this through and decide to hand you to the cops.’

The guy wastes no time running off into the dark. Dante watches me slide the knife out of sight before hurrying me away from the back of the estate. We’re near the main road when my
stomach protests at how casually I’ve just attacked another human being. I break away from Dante’s grip; the need to be elsewhere is urgent. I make it as far as the nearest shrubs
before I’m horrifically sick and throw up everything I have in my stomach.

‘Kit? Are you okay?’

Dante’s hand is soothing on the small of my back. I try and talk but I just have no air or energy, and the noise that unexpectedly comes out sounds suspiciously like a sob.

‘Shit.’ Dante’s arm goes around my waist and he drapes my other arm around his shoulder. ‘You need to straighten up,’ he tells me from far away. ‘You’ll
start breathing fine soon.’

I’m shaking now, my mind replaying what it felt like wanting to slide the knife a little bit more tightly across the man’s skin, because he’d hurt me and deserved to be hurt in
turn.

I’ve never had a panic attack before. I’ve been frightened and shaky before and felt trapped, but not this. This is something else.

I feel my knees buckle after a few steps and only the strength in Dante’s arms holds me upright.

‘Kit, what’s going on? You’re okay. We’re okay.’ Dante lets me sit down on a low wall and crouches in front of me, his warm hands wrapped tightly around my ice-cold
shaking ones. I open my mouth to tell him that something’s wrong with me, that I feel weird
in my head
and that I’d come so close to pressing the knife into the guy, but I
can’t. My throat locks up and suddenly I’m crying. Huge, ugly fat tears and, God, there are wracking sobs and I can’t stop shaking.

Dante pulls me against him and just holds me. I’m aware of people walking by, of someone stopping to ask if everything is okay and of Dante answering them in a low but dismissive voice. I
dig my nails into my palms, the pain helping me to focus until my breathing evens out and I don’t feel as if I’ve been scattered throughout the multiverse any more.

Slowly I move away from Dante, and wipe my face. ‘I’m fine now,’ I say after some time, when I can speak again. I hate that my voice sounds so small, and I clear my throat,
trying to find my usual tone. But I know it will take some time before can talk properly again.

He doesn’t let go of my elbows. He just keeps watching me for a few minutes longer before nodding and leaning back a little to look at me.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’ I press my hand to my ribs and grimace. The ache across my back tells me I’m also going to have a lovely bruise across my shoulders in a few hours. ‘It’s
going to ache like crazy in the morning, but I’m going to be okay.’

He looks sceptical but I have a bad-ass reputation to uphold, so I try to brazen it out.

‘I’m a tough girl. I promise.’ I draw another deep breath. ‘I just really need to shower. I can smell that guy all over me.’

‘What was the Spider-Man stunt you pulled back there?’ I ask Dante loudly over the bikes’ engines as we idle at a traffic light. ‘You could have been
seriously hurt.’

He looks at me in surprise. ‘I told you I did freerunning, didn’t I? Besides, I never fall.’

‘What? Freerunning, like parkour? And, no, you’ve never mentioned it. But that’s beside the point. You could have fallen and been killed.’

His eyes crinkle at me. ‘I’m fine plus I got the samples you wanted.’

‘And what? You always carry baggies with you?’ Even in the muted red light of the traffic lights I see a flash of embarrassment across his features. ‘That’s a bit Boy
Scouts, isn’t it?’

‘Turns out my Spook training was good for something, right?’

‘I’m almost impressed.’

The lights are taking a long time to change. I unzip my jacket and ruck my shirt up to check the damage. A bruise is already forming across my ribs and as I press experimentally against them
with cool fingers, I hiss at the pain.

‘You want to go to hospital?’ Dante’s watching me curiously as my fingers walk up my ribs. ‘It looks sore.’

‘No, I’ll be fine. I just need sleep.’ That almost makes me laugh. Sleep is more rare to me than the fabled golden eggs laid by a fairytale goose. Ideally, I need to be in the
Otherwhere, or somewhere here in the Frontier where the leylines are strong. The power coursing through them would help me to heal.

‘You need bandaging up. You could have a cracked rib.’

‘I’ve had cracked ribs before,’ I assure him. ‘This is fine, just bruising.’

The lights change. We move on to the next set, and idle there, waiting for them to change in turn. Two girls stroll past, arm in arm and laughing. They look so terrifically normal; I feel a pang
that I’m missing out on something important.

‘How long will this last? Seeing all the magic?’ Dante asks.

‘Until the kiss wears off. Or when you wash your face.’

‘And if I don’t wash my face?’

I pull my face at him. ‘Euch, that’s a bit gross.’

‘Seriously.’

‘It will still go. What I shared with you is a tiny bit of magic, designed – if you can call it that – to let you see magic tonight.’

‘Can you do it again?’ He gestures to his eyes. ‘Can you make it permanent?’

‘I don’t think so.’ The lights change back to green. ‘We can talk more later.’

Dante and I decide to call it an early night; both of us have had a tough evening. We’re to reconvene over breakfast in Covent Garden, which will give me a chance to read
the file on him that Uncle Andrew sent over. It will also give me time to go through the papers I have at home and even, shockingly, get some sleep, I hope.

Kyle’s watching a Bruce Lee movie when I get in and he looks surprised to see the state I’m in.

‘Are you okay?’ He shoves the bowl of popcorn to the side and follows me into the kitchen.

‘If you tell me I look bad I’m going to hurt you,’ I tell him.

‘Okay.’ He fills the kettle and moves around me as I throw together the makings of a large cheese, tomato and salad sandwich. ‘How was your day?’

Before I can answer, there’s a knock on the door. We trade looks. I reach for the large carving knife and follow Kyle to the door. He lifts the cricket bat out of the umbrella stand and
lets it casually lean against his leg. We may be the most paranoid set of cousins in the family, but we are also alive and relatively scar free.

He swings the front door open to reveal Dante standing on the front step, helmet under his arm and a baggie in his other hand.

‘Hi,’ he says to Kyle. ‘I’m Dante. You must be Kyle, I think?’ He bends down and leaves his helmet on the step so that he can shake hands. ‘Sorry about
stopping by unexpectedly. I forgot to give this to Kit.’ He hands me the baggie with the scrapings off the window.

I hold it up and peer at it, but honestly, it doesn’t look like much. It’s just clear
stuff
of some sort.

‘Do you want to come in?’ Kyle asks, painfully polite, the way his parents raised him, just as I say: ‘Thanks for this, I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Dante laughs, looking between us. ‘Thanks, but I think I’d better get home. It was nice meeting you, and I’ll see you tomorrow, Kit.’

I nod and walk back into the kitchen, tossing the baggie onto the table in the dining room.

‘You are such a cow sometimes,’ Kyle tells me. ‘He might be a Spook but he came all the way here to give you that.’

‘He did it on purpose. I don’t know what that purpose was, but yeah, he did it on . . .’

‘Purpose, you said. Why are you suddenly wary of him?’

‘Because he’s asked me if my magic can let him See permanently.’

‘Eh?’

So while Kyle brews us some strong tea and I munch my way through my sandwich and a packet of crisps, I update him with everything that’s happened today. One thing about Kyle: he’s a
superb listener.

‘I thought you said Dante joined the Spook Squad after he saw one of their agents fight a monster in an alley. He didn’t see the guy fight another guy: he saw the monster with teeth
and talons.’ When I nod he goes on. ‘He also saw the banshee last night, but tonight he couldn’t see the magic coming out of the little boy’s room.’

‘Until I kissed his eyes.’

‘Okay, that’s weird.’

‘Maybe his Sight isn’t as strong as I assumed it was.’

‘Yeah, it could be. Also, he ran up the wall.’ Just to be clear that I meant an actual wall, Kyle patted the surface next to him. ‘A wall like this?’

‘No, it was a brick wall and it was six storeys high. And he was fast, gecko fast.’

‘You think there’s something off about Mr Charisma?’

I chuckle at Kyle’s nickname, ignoring my twingeing muscles. ‘I think there’s something going on. Uncle Andrew sent me a file with the info he found on Dante. It may be
worthwhile checking it out.’

‘Your normal email?’ Kyle asks, already heading to his bank of computer screens. ‘You can access it through here. The tech on this one isn’t as new as the others so you
shouldn’t be able to fry it so easily.’

He’s right and I don’t manage to blow the hard drive up as I download the pdf file. I’m not sure what sites Uncle Andrew hacked to get the info on Dante but it looks pretty
comprehensive, and there are even photos of Dante and his family.

Dante grew up in an orphanage before going into foster care. He was moved from one family to another for the next couple of years, until his ninth birthday, when he was adopted
by a couple: Angela and William Burke.

I examine the pictures. Angela and William Burke look like good people. Both of them are tanned and attractive and look outdoorsy. William has his arm draped around Angela’s shoulders and
they’re both laughing into the camera. Behind them is somewhere with lots of trees and maybe even mountains in the distance. They are both dressed in hiking gear.

In the first photo with Dante, he looks a bit awkward, a bit sulky, and stands to the side of them a little, not quite part of the small family as yet.

Growing up, Dante got into a bit of trouble with some mates – casual vandalism and fighting, nothing too alarming. His grades were good and he excelled at maths and science. He was also a
successful athlete. There are pictures of him taking part in martial arts tournaments, with both Angela and William in the audience. There are also photos of a young Dante on a skateboard, cap
backwards, smirking at the camera, with his arm around two other boys. Other shots, maybe mobile phone pictures, show Dante and his mate leaping down stairs, doing handstands on railings and the
edges of buildings.