Cal squeezed his eyes shut again and when he opened them, present-day London surrounded him.
Better yet, a woman hanging outside a pub on the other side of the street was giving him a killer come-get-me smile.
He crossed the road to her, ignoring the blast of a car horn as he closed the distance between them. She was beautiful, not gorgeous, but that wicked look in her dark eyes told him she would do just nicely. Her red-painted lips curled into a smile as she angled her head up, her smoky eyelids dropping to half-mast as she gave him a leisurely once over.
“Like what you see?” he purred as he stopped beside her and checked her out from her twisted knot of dark hair to her ample breasts pressed together in her white low-cut top, to the slate grey business skirt that rode a little high up her thighs and long legs made for wrapping around his waist as he pounded into her. “I like what I see.”
She fingered the buttons of his black shirt and smiled up into his eyes as he leaned closer, planting his elbow above her shoulder on the brick wall at her back.
He stared down at her lips, losing himself in the fantasy building in his mind as they moved, her tongue flashing between them as she spoke to him. He didn’t listen to what she had to say, but in his mind he heard words in a voice that seemed to reach into him and take hold of something.
Sweet shell-pink lips replaced crimson, rogue strands of spun gold brushing cream cheeks flushed with… anger?
He swallowed as her words lashed and then faltered, the fear that filled them rousing something dangerous inside him, something that snarled at him to protect her.
To seize hold of her and not let her go.
Her palm came to rest against his chest and his heart thundered against his ribs, the spot where she touched heating to a thousand degrees. Unbearable. He needed that delicate hand on his bare flesh. He needed to feel her fingers dancing over his scars as they had done.
As they had done?
He blinked.
The pretty brunette in front of him kept talking even as he reeled.
Because the first thing that popped into his head rattled him.
He didn’t want her.
He looked around at all the other fine women, every one of them good enough to satisfy this itch for him and give him a few hours of mindless, uncomplicated pleasure. Exactly what he needed.
A twisted band of gold hair that begged to be unravelled. Tropical blue eyes that looked green in some lights, holding him fast. A soft oval face that he ached to touch, to discover whether her skin was as satiny as he imagined.
Those were the things he needed.
All of these women lacked those things.
They lacked that heavily accented voice that he wanted to hear against his ear as she urged him on, pleaded him to give her what she needed from him—what he needed from her.
He scrubbed a hand over his face and tried to purge the French woman from his mind, made a valiant attempt to smile and keep his focus on the woman who was here with him.
One who was pleading him with her eyes, just as he wanted.
Only those dark eyes left him cold when he looked into them.
He bit out a curse.
“What’s wrong?” She feathered her fingers along his collarbone, towards the open vee of his shirt.
Everything.
That’s what was wrong.
Every damned thing, including himself if he was looking at such a fine creature and feeling nothing, not even a flicker of arousal.
An unsettling sensation shot down his spine and he eased away from the woman and looked around the streets, seeking the source of it.
Aware he was being watched.
He scanned the rooftops, the side roads, studied every single person coming and going along the streets.
Who was it that kept stalking him?
His enemy?
Or someone else?
Chapter 6
A chill hung in the evening air as Marinda hurried from the main building of the Conservatoire, heading for the canal that would lead her back to her apartment. The street lights chased the burgeoning darkness back, throwing shadows among the bushes and trees that lined the path. Shadows she ignored.
Cass was going to be mad at her for delaying her departure from Paris, but Marinda didn’t care. Her father had worked hard to help her afford the tuition at such a prestigious school, and she had been thankful every day she had walked onto the campus for her first class, and every day she had returned home at night from practicing with her small circle of friends or the orchestra. She couldn’t just throw away everything he had done for her, not when it would mean throwing away her dreams too.
Her father had wanted her to achieve those dreams, encouraging her to strive for them at every turn. Whenever she had suffered a setback, or had been plagued with doubts about her abilities, he had picked her up and set her back on her feet, and encouraged her.
She knew he wouldn’t want her to give up.
Colette had been home when Marinda had returned, had held her as she had cried again and told her everything, and then helped her to bed, insisting she rested. The next day, when she had been torn and going in circles, unsure what to do about everything, Colette had told her to defer her study.
It hadn’t even occurred to Marinda that she could do such a thing.
Her tutors had been very understanding when she had managed to speak with them, and the head staff had agreed to allow her a leave of absence, stating that she could return next year to start her studies again. A year away from school sounded like too much, but at the same time, not enough.
Could she find the people who had murdered her father in that time?
Could she bring them to justice?
Could she overcome the grief consuming her?
She only hoped that she could.
Another question formed in her mind, one that had plagued her for the past two days.
How many other things had her father kept from her?
She pushed that question out of her head, together with the anger and sorrow that rose up to fill her aching heart. If her father had kept things from her, he had done it to protect her. He had wanted to keep her safe, and he had paid for it with his life.
She looked back at the buildings of the Conservatoire. Made a vow. She would come back and finish her studies. She wouldn’t waste the sacrifices her father had made, or deny the belief he’d had in her talents and in her. She would go on to live her dream.
She just had to make it through this nightmare first.
The streets were quiet as she hurried towards her apartment, keeping her head down and watching the shadows as night set in. Cars whooshed past her on the main road, heading towards the heart of Paris. She would follow them soon enough. It was a short walk to the nearest metro stop, where she could catch a train to Gare du Nord where she would board the Eurostar.
First, she had to pick up something precious, something she couldn’t leave behind.
The reason she wasn’t flying to London.
She pushed the door to her building open, followed the staircases up to her floor, and fished her keys out of her pocket as she neared her door. She listened, on high alert, ridiculous fear trickling through her veins as she paused outside her door. She looked down. No light came from inside. Where was Colette? Her heart drummed faster as that fear kicked up a notch. Was someone in there, holding Colette captive, waiting for Marinda to return?
She glanced at Jacques’ door, tempted to knock and ask him for backup.
Jacques.
Her pulse settled as she remembered that Colette had said she was going out with Jacques and Adelaide, and some others from her class tonight.
She had wanted to say goodbye to Colette, but she didn’t have time to go to the bar where they usually hung out. She glanced at her watch. She was going to be cutting it close as it was.
Marinda slid the key into the lock, turned it and pushed the door open. She fumbled for the light switch. When the light ca
me on, she tensed, her pulse shooting faster again.
But no one was there in her living room.
She grabbed the backpack she had prepared, checking it had her passport and her stash of money in it, and then seized the reason she couldn’t fly.
The weight of her cello felt good in her hand, a comfort she badly needed as her racing heart eased and she turned back towards the door. She closed it, leaving the light on for Colette, and pocketed her keys.
The night air had cooled a few degrees when she hit the pavement and the door to the building closed behind her. She huddled down into her dark red wool jacket and tightened her grip on her cello as she strode along the street, heading for the metro station.
At the junction with the main road, she caught a flash of blond hair. Her head whipped towards the man, a sense that she knew him flooding her. When her gaze locked on him though, that sensation faded.
It wasn’t the man she had pictured in her head.
One with stormy blue eyes that had revealed a stunning depth of pain to her.
Marinda touched her throat and went in the opposite direction to the man, cutting across the road to walk on the river side. A niggling feeling built inside her, had her step slowing despite the urgency that rode her, telling her to hurry to the station because she needed to be on that train to London tonight.
She felt as if she had forgotten something vital.
It was nothing, probably just stress. She had freaked herself out on the walk home, thinking about what her father had said to her, how even Cass was convinced she was in danger. It was putting her on edge.
The man she kept seeing was just the one who had taken her hostage. He wasn’t important. Some crazed drug addict who hadn’t wanted to be in that hospital. The fact he had fled from the police was proof enough that he wasn’t a good man, and had expected them to apprehend him.
She reached another intersection, where a bridge crossed the river, and waited beneath one of the trees. Leaves danced on the cool breeze, fluttering past her as she stared at the light, waiting for it to change so she could cross the road.
She leaned forwards and looked along the bridge, at the empty road, tempted to cross against the light.
Ice arrowed down her spine.
She looked around, her pulse jacking up, sure that someone was watching her. There was no one on the street with her. Only the cars that were coming and going at intervals. The light changed and she rushed to the other side of the road, her pace quickening now. She was just being jittery. No one was following her.
The weight of her cello suddenly felt as if it had doubled, dragging her focus down to it.
Her gaze leaped around the buildings to her right that lined the opposite side of the road, and then she twisted to look behind her as a memory popped into her head and seized hold of her.
A woman who had tried to steal her cello from her.
The streets around her didn’t have the best lighting, and the neighbourhood wasn’t the safest in Paris. More than one student living in the area had had their instrument stolen from them. The more unsavoury characters in the city, the drug addicts like that man at the hospital, were often drawn to the neighbourhood by the prospect of getting their hands on an instrument that they could pawn for a good amount of cash, enough to keep them in drugs for a while.
Marinda lifted her cello and clutched it to her as she began to jog. No one was taking it from her. It was all she had left of her father.
His words rang in her mind.
They would be after her now.
She was just being paranoid, letting fear get the better of her.
A man dressed all in black dropped out of the air in front of her. Another two landed behind him.
Panic blasted through her.
Fear chilled her to the bone.
Turned to fire as they launched at her.
As footsteps rang out behind her too.
As they closed in on her, her mind screamed at her to run, but her feet refused to cooperate as the flames burned through her, rising to consume all of her.
She stared the man down as he barrelled towards her, a cold sort of emptiness flooding every inch of her.
She had to run.
The cold inside her hissed four words back at her.
She had to fight.
Everything went dark.
There was pain. Something hurt. Something was crushing her ribs. Screams echoed in her mind. No. Bellows. Bellows that had sounded like they had come from a tormented animal, a creature being tortured and toyed with, aware that it was going to die no matter how bravely it fought.
A coppery stench filled the air, her lungs.
Satisfying.
But not enough.
She shirked that feeling, shaken by it as she tried to sit up. The weight pressed heavily upon her. Was she trapped beneath something?
She tried to open her eyes, but something fused her lashes together. She lifted her left hand and rubbed at them, at the dried crust that held them closed. When she tried to lift her right arm too, it knocked against something.
Something soft. Warm.
Fleshy.
Marinda forced her eyes opened and shrieked when she saw the heavily built man draped across her chest, his sightless gaze staring straight through her. Blood covered his face, dripping from long gashes across it and the corner of his mouth. Panic set in again and she shoved at him, kept pushing and pushing, until she could wriggle out from underneath him.
She scooted backwards, heart pounding, blood rushing in her ears as she struggled for air.
Was he dead?
She moved onto her knees, unsure what to do. Check his vitals? He continued to stare through her and bile rose in her throat as she noticed something.
His head was the wrong way around.
Her hand flew to her mouth and the scent of blood had her stomach rebelling. She looked at her hand, at the dark liquid that coated it. His blood. She twisted away and vomited.
Froze.
There was an arm beside her.
No body. Just an arm.
She swallowed. Didn’t want to look, but knew she had to. She closed her eyes, drew down a shuddering breath, and forced herself to look at the street around her.
A leg rested close to the arm, the end of it ragged, as if someone—something—had torn it from the socket. There was a head too, closer to the dead man. She swallowed again. It didn’t stop there.
One of the trees was on its side, the roots torn from the earth, ripped right through the pavement, rucking up the slabs. Halfway along the trunk, there was a dark smear splattered across the bark. And the road.
And the body that stuck out from beneath the tree, the chest caved in by the weight that rested on top of their head.
Marinda retched again.
The fear returned, terror that gripped her in icy claws and propelled her into action. She had to leave this place. Now. She wasn’t sure what had happened, and she didn’t want to know. She shuffled forwards on her hands and knees, scouring the street for her cello.
It rested against the wall, as if someone had calmly and carefully placed it there.
Before they had ripped several people apart, torn a tree from the earth and used it as a weapon.
Not her.
She stumbled onto her feet, reached her cello without falling, and grabbed it. She hugged it to her chest and staggered away from the carnage, heart labouring as her breaths came faster and faster. It hadn’t been her. She wasn’t violent. She was gentle. Kind.
She hadn’t done this. She wasn’t responsible.
Someone else had committed such atrocious violence.
She hadn’t done this.
She hadn’t.
She looked back at the carnage.
Those people had been about to attack her, possibly even kill her as her father had been, and now they were dead.
Cold slithered through her, whispering four words in her mind that froze her blood.
And i
t was beautiful.
Chapter 7
A delicious roar filled Cal’s ears as he gunned the engine of his sleek Kawasaki Ninja superbike, an incomparable high flooding him as the bike accelerated, lunging forwards before smoothly rising in speed. The cars whizzed past him, the elegant Parisian pale stone townhouses a blur as he wove between the vehicles.
At fifty miles per hour.
Sixty.
He glanced down at the instruments. Sixty-five.
His senses blared a warning and he leaned right, sweeping around the back of a small delivery truck, threading the bike between it and a car, a space of only a few feet as traffic halted at a set of lights.
Cal blazed through them, grinning as wind slammed against him. His ponytail whipped around behind him as he hit seventy.
In a thirty.
His blood pumped harder, the fire Keras had ignited in it fuelling him as he revved the engine again and leaned forwards, gaining more speed as he hit an open stretch of road ahead of the traffic.
Eighty.
Ahead of him, more cars loomed.
Cal narrowed his eyes on them and rode faster, harder, aiming for the smallest of gaps between the vehicles. A thrill chased through him, a high at its finest, as he streaked through the narrow space, earning a few angry blasts of horns from the occupants of the cars. His heart pumped harder. Adrenaline surged higher.
He swerved around another bike and banked right beyond it, weaving between two more cars. Ahead of him, someone cut lanes. He gritted his teeth and forced the bike left, barely avoiding colliding with the back of the sedan.
His heart beat faster.
That high hit the sweet spot.
Everything else faded away as he lost himself in the exhilaration of riding hard. Riding fast.
Riding dangerous.
He cut it close a few times, coming near to crashing as he chased the ultimate high.
It hit him as he crossed another intersection against the lights, hitting ninety as he ducked and wove around cars coming across him from his left and his right, barely evading them.
Dancing with death.
Gods, it was good.
Calistos: Guardians of Hades Series Book 5 Page 6