Blood Shadows

by Lindsay J. Pryor

  She opened the first few pages. She knew it wasn’t going to tell her anything she didn’t already know and certainly not why Kane wanted her soul. But she needed something to distract her thoughts from him, something to curb her frustration. She needed to at least feel like she was doing something, however futile, because even that felt better than sitting and waiting for the vampire to make his move.

  Kane stood outside the VCU headquarters’ gates as he lit a cigarette, exhaling a steady stream of smoke to mingle with the fresh morning air. Despite the sunrise, the sky was fortunately still a heavy, tepid grey, the clouds blocking the ferocious UV rays. It wouldn’t do him much good to be stood it in for too long, though, and he’d have to sleep it off when he got back to his place. He’d probably lose most of the day recovering from the long walk back in the draining sunlight.

  The inhalation of smoke did little to sate his irritation, his frustration. Two encounters with the girl and she was already making him second-guess her. He didn’t want to be intrigued by her – something that aggravated him more than the fact she had outsmarted him. Feisty, obstinate, intelligent and brave Caitlin Parish who’d felt as soft, warm and enticing as woodland moss as he’d lain on top of her, pinning her nubile body to the table with ease. A fragile body and eyes even more vulnerable, eyes that had been wary but nonetheless still defiant enough to grate on his nerves. And that was what he had to hold on to – that sense of irritation she had evoked, not the fascination.

  But at least he’d fed her enough information to make sure she didn’t run and hide. Not that it was in her character to do so. But questions would have been asked: why she was still alive, why he’d confronted her, why he’d allowed himself to be tracked. Questions and complications brought about by her escape. But she’d only get away from him once. Nothing was beyond rectifying and nightfall would come soon enough. It needed to, because losing any more time wasn’t an option.

  He lifted his cigarette back to his lips. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know who was there. Despite the clench of fury in his chest, he kept his gaze ahead, exhaled another steady stream of smoke as he took a moment. ‘What do you want, Max?’

  ‘I want to know what you’re playing at, Kane.’

  Kane licked his bottom lip, composing himself before turning to face him.

  Max remained rooted to the spot a safe enough distance away and in plain sight of the security cameras and the armed guard in his tower above.

  ‘I could ask you the same question, allowing me to be brought in with nothing conclusive to support your accusations. Still, it got me up close and personal with the VCU’s golden girl.’ Kane exhaled a taunting, steady stream of smoke. ‘So it wasn’t a complete waste of my time.’

  Max adjusted his position to try to take the authoritative stance, but Kane could see the unease in his eyes; he could sense the fear. Max shouldn’t be at the gate talking to him or confronting him. But he had the obvious question that he couldn’t manage to contain: ‘Why did you let her live?’

  ‘I don’t just go around randomly killing anyone, Max.’ He glanced to the floor as he flicked ash onto it. He looked back into his eyes. ‘Despite what you boys like to claim.’

  ‘Leave her alone, Kane.’

  Kane smiled. ‘You should have trained her better. Taught her about playing kiss-chase with boys from the wrong side of the track.’

  ‘She was doing her job. She did it and now it’s over.’

  ‘Says who?’

  Max’s eyes exuded dread and resentment despite his efforts to contain it. ‘What do you want with her, Kane?’

  Kane took a step closer, just enough for Max to lose his stance and take a small but wary step back. ‘What would any cold-blooded vampire want with her?’

  Max narrowed his eyes. ‘Do you want to make a deal over something? Is that what this is about?’

  Kane smiled again. ‘Maybe I’ll get back to you on that one.’ He turned away before his instincts got the better of him.

  ‘Is it to do with the prophecy?’

  Kane stopped. He exhaled another steady stream of smoke despite the inner jolt at hearing the words slip from human lips. If they’d been alone, Max would have already been pinned face-first against the gate, his swiftly broken arm wrenched up behind his back, his knees cracking against the tarmac as Kane demanded his source. But he knew the rumours were out there, even if they didn’t know all the facts. No one but the Higher Order vampires and master vampires knew the precise facts of how it would be brought to fruition. At least it had better be that way or he’d find whoever had decided to the contrary.

  He turned to face him again, kept his composure impassive. ‘And what prophecy is that, Max?’

  The grip of silence was indication enough that Max had clearly said something he shouldn’t. Wary hesitation flooded his eyes. His lips and eyebrows twitched. His stance was instantly defensive. ‘The one where you win.’

  Kane dropped his cigarette hand loose to his side again. ‘Someone has been telling tales.’

  ‘It’s no secret. Not anymore. And you know it. Just tell me if that’s why you want Caitlin.’

  The fact that Max seemed to believe a shadow reader could have something to do with it was reassurance enough that he clearly didn’t know what he was talking about. Kane lifted the cigarette back to his lips. ‘You need to find yourself more accurate sources.’

  ‘Vampires will never rule humans,’ Max said firmly. ‘We’ll see to it.’

  Kane suppressed his scowl with a smile. ‘Take care of yourself, Max,’ he said, turning away again. He sauntered out onto the street. ‘And that pretty stepdaughter of yours.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Caitlin woke up feeling cold, the door’s buzzer jolting her back to reality.

  Images of Kane were still fresh in her mind, the memories dispersing with her increased consciousness. She’d been back in the corridor, his hard body pressed against hers, his cool, strong hands pinning her wrists to the wall as his lips had lowered to hers.

  She wiped the dampness from the corner of her mouth and scanned the darkened lounge to regain her bearings. She lifted her head to check the windows. They had been brimming with the dull light of day the last time she’d looked, but were now opaque with dusk. She twisted her wrist and squinted at her watch. It was just after five in the evening. She’d only been asleep a couple of hours at most and now both her head and body achingly recognised it.

  The buzzer rang again.

  Her socked feet met carpet as she moved into a seated position and rubbed her neck from where she’d fallen asleep at an awkward angle amongst the sofa cushions. As the buzzer rang for longer this time, more impatiently, she staggered across to the intercom. She pulled her sloppy, oversized sweater back up over her shoulder, the hems of her jeans scuffing on the carpet. By this time she was usually already at work but now HQ felt like nothing more than some distant, alien concept. She took the intercom phone off the hook and held it to her ear. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Caitlin, it’s me.’

  Her knees weakened at the sound of the voice, her grip tightening on the handset as she stood stunned to silence. Rob. The man who’d abandoned her when she’d needed him most.

  ‘Can I come up?’ Rob asked.

  She rested her palm against the wall, repressing every urge to hang up. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I need to see you.’

  She took a deep steady breath, her finger hovering over the door release button.

  ‘Caitlin, please.’

  After a few more seconds, she pressed the release. She smoothed down her hair, readjusted her sweater and opened the door. She stood in the doorway waiting, her clenched hands tucked in the sleeves of her sweater as she folded her arms. She hadn’t even showered since last night’s events. She should have cared, but surprisingly she didn’t.

  The slow, steady scuff of boots against the stairs filled her with long-suppressed memories. It was an even greater blow to her stomach a
s he emerged from around the corner. Rob looked at her with those all-too-familiar pale-blue eyes, his sandy hair still as ruffled as it had been when she’d been in love with him all those years ago.

  Before he’d left her.

  ‘This is so transparent,’ she said, her glare fixed on his as she guarded the threshold to her home. ‘I assume you’ve been talking to Max?’

  ‘Can I come in, or are we going to do this out here?’

  She kept her arms folded as she leaned against the doorframe.

  He stepped up to her, amusement in his eyes. ‘You always were tetchy when you’d just woken up.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ she warned.

  ‘I’m not denying I deserve the cold treatment but you can at least give me ten minutes, Cait.’

  ‘Sounds like ten minutes too long to me.’

  He kept his gaze steadily on hers. ‘I still care about you no matter what you think. So, yes, Max did send me here to talk some sense into you, but it didn’t take a lot of persuading, trust me.’

  ‘Trust you? That’s a joke.’

  He sighed steadily, squeezing through the doorway and past her.

  She closed the door behind them but stayed rooted to the spot. It shouldn’t have felt so strange having him in the apartment, but every facet of her slipped into defence mode. She’d once loved this man, adored him, would have done anything to get him back six years before. But now his presence felt oppressive, uncomfortable even. And it irritated her as he appraised the state of her apartment.

  ‘I’ve had other priorities,’ she said in defence of the mess.

  ‘So I hear.’ He wandered over to the coffee table to where Kane’s picture lay amongst the pile of paperwork. He lifted it up, his eyes cold as he stared down at it. ‘The infamous Kane Malloy. You sure know how to pick them, Cait.’

  ‘My job has nothing to do with you. And neither does the VCU anymore, remember?’

  He looked across at her. ‘You must know what you’re contemplating is insane?’

  ‘Max had no right to disclose this to you.’

  ‘He’s trying to stop you making the biggest mistake of your life.’

  ‘He’s eight years late for that one.’

  Rob raised his eyebrows. ‘Ouch.’ He threw the picture down and reached for one of the folders to flick through the paperwork. ‘How long have you been tracking him? Five years?’

  ‘That stuff is confidential.’

  ‘Which is why you’ve made private copies?’ He threw the folder back down and strolled over to the kitchen. ‘Make myself a coffee, shall I? Are you still plenty of milk with no sugar?’

  She bent over the coffee table, shoving as much paper as she could back into the folders. ‘Why the hell is any of this your business? Why are you even making it your business? You still care, yeah, lovely. Thanks for leaving it over six years before letting me know.’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like I just left you with no explanation,’ he said, turning to face her, the kettle boiling in the background. ‘What we had should have always stayed as friendship.’

  ‘My friend wouldn’t have walked out on me when I needed him. Three months, Rob. My mother had been dead less than three months and you turned your back on me.’

  ‘Like there was ever a good time.’

  ‘My father would have been ashamed of you.’

  ‘He would have understood.’

  She gazed deep into his pale-blue eyes, the creases just beginning to form around them betraying his forty years. ‘I was in love with you. From thirteen years of age I idolised you. Whenever Dad did a night shift, I used to set my alarm for dawn and watch through my bedroom window in the hope he would give you a lift home from work and invite you in for a coffee first. I lived for the day I wouldn’t have to wear my school uniform anymore. When I could go to college and you would start looking at me like a woman and not just a girl. You were all I wanted.’

  ‘And I tried not to fall in love with you back. But it happened. Those two years were the best of my life. I know you probably don’t believe that, but they were. But I needed more than that.’

  ‘A girlfriend who didn’t plan to chase vampires for a living, you mean. A nice normal girl who didn’t shadow-read third-species criminals.’

  ‘It didn’t mean I stopped loving you.’

  Months earlier, this would have been a statement that would have changed everything. Would have gone some way to heal the wound of his leaving. Now she felt nothing.

  ‘You knew I couldn’t handle it, Cait. You made your choice.’

  ‘And you punished me for it.’

  ‘No, I let you do what you wanted to do.’

  ‘Let me?’

  He grabbed two mugs from the drainer, checking they were clean. ‘I’ve not come here to argue with you.’

  She folded her arms. ‘No, you came here to tell me exactly what I should and shouldn’t be doing again.’

  He made the coffees and turned back around, handing her a mug.

  She unravelled her arms to accept it, wrapping her hands around it. She stared into the contents.

  ‘Max tells me you used hemlock on Malloy.’ He took a mouthful of his drink as he leaned back against the counter. ‘Into messing with VCU property now, are you?’

  ‘I did what I had to.’

  ‘And just how long had you been planning that?’

  ‘Long enough.’

  ‘This has to stop, Cait. This whole Malloy thing. You’re out of your depth.’

  ‘So Max thinks.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  She took a slow sip of coffee, breaking away from the interrogation of his gaze again.

  He strolled past her into the living space. Placing his mug on the coffee table, he slipped off his jacket, throwing it over the back of the sofa. He was still in good shape. Always had been. He had aged well. In fact, seemingly very little had changed other than the way she now felt inside. She should have felt more, knew she should. Maybe relief at least or a pang of something that reminded her why she’d fallen so deeply for him. But still she felt nothing.

  ‘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, year
s. 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.