Dice closed the door behind them before coming to stand alongside him. ‘You get to take your pick,’ he said, wrapping his arm around his back, resting his hand on his shoulder like they’d been buddies for a lifetime.
Eden wanted to shrug him off and shove him away, his skin crawling at any sense of alliance between the two of them, let alone as the wary gaze of the woman to the right darted between the two of them.
‘They’re both as good as each other,’ Dice added with a shrug. ‘That one’s a bit more compliant,’ he said, indicating the woman to the right, ‘but this one has a habit of getting feisty. At least she always does for me.’ He laughed, slapped Eden on the back in a way that made him want to turn around and slam his fist straight into his gaping mouth. ‘It depends which you’d prefer. Just don’t take too long to decide.’
Dice obviously planned on sticking around; planned on having a show as much as being an active participant. Eden looked away and closed his eyes for a second, taking a deep and steady breath.
But when he looked back at the women, back at Dice, he saw the uncertainty in his eyes.
‘You’re not shy, are you?’ Dice said with a semi-laugh, but his eyes echoed suspicion, reminding Eden he wasn’t a buddy at all. Reminding Eden that this wasn’t just chill-out time – this was another task. Yet another fucking task.
But the very thought of getting between the sheets with either of them, listening to Dice with either of them, sent ripples of disgust through him – not least after what he’d shared with Jessie. There was a time when he wouldn’t have been shy about an audience, albeit with all concerned consensual. But now even recollections of that felt like yet another in a long list of things that now seemed the cheap, distasteful, self-sating indulgences that they had been at the time.
Eden sent him a fleeting smile back. ‘Shy, no. Picky, yes.’
Dice raised his eyebrows slightly. ‘You’re saying they’re not good enough for you?’
‘I’m saying I have a thing about being provided. I’m more the hunter-gatherer type.’
Dice laughed again and slapped him on the back once more, only this time he veered him off into the corner of the room, out of earshot of the two women. He kept his voice low as he leaned in conspiratorially towards him.
‘Listen, buddy,’ Dice whispered. ‘I’ve got your back here, okay? Pummel’s got a lucrative deal he wants you to be a part of. I mean a really lucrative deal. But he’s got to know he can trust you. He’s got to know you’ve got what it takes – that you’re hard enough to do what you’re going to have to do. I said to get you a nice little vampire bitch but Pummel seemed to think you’d find that too easy. I know they’re human, but these two are just a couple of cheap whores, Eden. No one gives a fuck about them. And I’m here to help you out, buddy. I’m here to help you see it through.’
Eden was sure not to flinch, to mask the heat burning his veins. ‘See what through?’
‘During, after, even before – whatever gets you going. But neither of them are getting out of here alive,’ Dice declared, his eyes darkly serious. ‘Do you know what I’m saying?’
Eden’s jaw tensed. His abs tightened as he held Dice’s gaze. ‘Pummel wants me to kill them?’
‘Just the one of them. I’ll do the other. Quick, slow, whichever way you want. They don’t even have to see it coming.’ His grip on Eden’s shoulder tightened. ‘But you’ve got to do this. I’m not kidding around when I say it’s them or you, Eden. I know which I’d opt for.’
* * *
Pummel threw another card into the mix before giving off a small yawn. He’d more or less fully healed now – just a glimmer of a couple of grazes remaining on his cheek.
Jessie glanced across at the larder door in frustration, remaining watchful and wary of the two cons she was sat with, her hands clenched in her lap.
‘What if he doesn’t do it?’ Homer asked, breaking the oppressive silence.
Her heart skipped a beat.
‘He’ll do it,’ Pummel declared.
‘If he doesn’t?’
‘He’s not going to choose letting a couple of sluts like the Grace sisters live over his position here, I can guarantee it.’
Her stomach flipped. She’d heard of the Grace sisters. They were a particular favourite of both Dice and Chemist. They’d been a part of the row for a couple of years. The eldest had been married to a con who had moved there – a con who thought he was something until his disloyalty to Pummel had led to one of his famous public guttings. The women weren’t hard enough to survive on their own. They’d clung together and clung to the familiarity of the row, doing what they needed to in order to survive rather than face siring amongst the third species elsewhere in Blackthorn.
‘Live?’ It fell out before she had time to think about it, her need to know what he’d set Eden up for overwhelming.
Pummel’s gaze snapped to hers. Amused by her shock, her transparent horror, a small smile escaped as he scanned his cards again. ‘Eden’s going to do a little cleaning up job for me,’ he said. ‘A bit of flushing out of the disloyal before I have him to freshen the place up with some new blood.’
She’d heard the whispers between Dice, Chemist and Pummel – the rumours that the women had been talking of leaving, maybe getting in with another row. It was a death wish once an allegiance to a row was made and plenty who wouldn’t touch them considering that allegiance had been to Pummel. But it seemed the women had reached the point of trying.
‘You’ve sent him to kill them?’
‘And have a little fun along the way,’ Pummel declared, throwing down his card. ‘If he’s the man I think he is. If not, I’ll have to do some flushing out of a different kind. Something I’d rather avoid if possible with him having such good contacts. Which is why Dice is there to help him make the right choices.’
She was already rapidly piecing it together, but she asked anyway. ‘What do you need his contacts for?’
Pummel wanted him in on selling the young. He’d probably had him in mind from the outset – from the moment Eden had arrived with the rare stash of herbs. He just needed to know he could trust him, that he was as amoral as he was effective. He wanted to know he was capable of murdering in cold blood – not like the con in the back of the van, but those he would see as vulnerable. He wanted Eden compliant in handing the kids over to a fate that was crueller than death.
‘Too many questions, Jessie,’ Pummel declared, throwing down another card. His gaze snatched back to hers. ‘You know what kind of trouble that can get you into.’ He looked back down at his hand of cards. ‘But don’t worry; if he passes, I’ll make sure he continues to keep a very close eye on you, so there’s no need to be getting jealous. A boy’s got to let off a bit of steam now and again.’
Her heart raced. This time they had cornered him. They had well and truly cornered him – just when she and Eden were on the cusp of making progress.
‘Until then, can I be excused? I’m tired. It’s been a hell of a night.’
Pummel glanced across at her again. ‘You stay in your room. I’ll check on you in a while.’
She pushed back her chair, closed the kitchen door behind her and stared down the empty hallway.
There was no way Eden would do it. There was no way he could do it. He was going to fail Pummel’s final test.
But with the pressure of Dice breathing down his neck, so much depending on it, if Eden thought he could get away with making it painless, quick…
She wouldn’t let him do it.
It would destroy him.
She glanced over her shoulder to see Pummel had left the kitchen to watch her ascent, to check her ascent, his eyes laden with suspicion. She knew he’d have someone mark the bottom of the stairs, just to be sure.
She made her way up to her room, Pummel disappearing from sight as she circled around to the dog-legged staircase, almost needing to crawl up, the weight in her legs too heavy.
She closed her door behind her and l
ocked it.
She yanked off her dress, snatched her capri trousers and T-shirt from the wardrobe and tugged them on, along with her ballet flats, on her way as she crossed to the window.
Opening the window, she removed the concealed wooden chunks from behind the bars – the ones that, from an inside view, were impossible to detect as having been cut out from the windowsill. She carefully removed the bars one by one before easing herself onto the windowsill.
She used the drainpipe to help her get up onto the roof, silently skimming across the tiles with swift and nimble ease before reaching the skylight five houses down. She peered through the filthy glass, checking the room was still vacant, before clambering down to the window. She kicked open the rotten wood frame that swung back on its broken hinges and dropped herself silently to the old carpeted floor inside.
She unlocked the door with her skeleton key and peered outside. As she would expect, there was plenty of movement out there – plenty of room-hopping, noise, the dim light and smoke smog hopefully enough to let her slip around without too much attention. If anyone did try to take her on, she was in the right mood to keep their demise swift and quiet.
Dice would have taken him down at least a couple more houses if they were heading towards where the Grace sisters hung out. She didn’t know the exact room, but she had a rough idea – and that was all she could work with until she got there.
‘If hunter-gathering is your thing, take the reluctant,’ Dice said, the heartless glint in his eyes chilling Eden. ‘When she starts fighting back, those instincts are going to kick in real easy. Just enjoy it,’ he added, with a grin as sickening as his glint.
Dice slapped him on the back once more before sauntering across to the two beds.
Eden remained in the corner of the room, his hands flexing then clenching by his sides.
He should have been down in the cellar with Jessie. They should have been working out how to get the lycan kids out. He should have been one on one with Pummel, trying to get him to reveal where the necklace was hidden, searching for any opportunity to bring it up in conversation. Now that Jessie was in his care, he had more justification to ask seemingly nonchalant questions; questions that would be easier to weave in when Pummel had too much alcohol in his veins or too much substance in his lungs to notice.
But Pummel wasn’t that sloppy. Not once had he yet seen Pummel out of control. Pummel never took his eye off the ball when it came to his domain – and never when it came to Jessie.
And she was back there with him now, probably still in the kitchen, her impatience no doubt as rife as his at finding Pummel and Homer there. It expended time they didn’t have, that he didn’t have. Dawn was the cut-off. At dawn he was no longer under TSCD jurisdiction. He needed to report back or it was over.
He watched Dice take his seat on the bed furthest away. The way the woman flinched when he placed his hand on her knee instigated bile to gather in the depths of Eden’s throat.
He could be quick. Looking back at the one nearest to him, her head still downturned, though she’d now recoiled her feet onto the covers, had turned side-on to what was happening to her companion, he knew, in the long term, it would almost be kinder.
The alternative meant complications he could do without – for him, subsequently for Jessie, ultimately for Honey.
This was why he had been hired – because logic could dictate to him over emotion. Cold and calculated focus had become innate. No one had trained him to have an assassin’s mind – he had developed it out of necessity. He had developed it to survive.
‘So we’re going to play it like that again tonight, are we?’ Dice declared with a grin as he nipped at her neck, sliding his hand up her inner thigh.
The woman clenched her jaw, her hands gripping the sheets tighter.
Eden could end it for both of the women. That would earn him bonus points with Pummel. That would secure what he needed. And he could get back to Jessie, get back to the task in hand.
He stepped over to the foot of the bed and looked down at the woman whose eyes remained downturned, Dice’s explorative hand on the other one now a blur in the corner of his eye.
The one who sat waiting for him unfastened the buttons on her sheer black blouse as if on autopilot, revealing her lacy red bra beneath. She leaned back on her elbows in a move that was clearly intended to be provocative, yet somehow defiant despite being victim to the inevitable. But her breathing was shallow, her chest rising and falling too rapidly.
As her eyes locked on Eden, he knew he’d seen that look before.
He’d been nothing more than a child at the time – small and weak. But his mind had already been opened to how bad, how dangerous, how scary the world was around him. He’d been a smart kid – observant, vigilant. Too smart to have not learned how helplessness felt.
He’d been alone in the apartment with his mother when they’d come around to collect the rent. He hadn’t understood the dynamics back then, but he had known there was something wrong by the look on his mother’s face. He’d also seen it far too many times to not detect when she was trying to be brave. Her glance in his direction had said it all. A routine visit had suddenly become about protecting him.
He couldn’t work out what it involved, just that the numbness in his mother’s composure as she disappeared with one of the rent collectors, the blank look on her face, had him squeezing his metal toy car so tightly that it had made his palm bleed.
He’d looked back at the guy who’d sat opposite him, grinning that same dead-eyed grin he’d seen on Pummel. He had chucked him a pack of mints and told him to chill out.
Something in Eden had snapped.
It had led to a swift clip around the ear, one that knocked Eden to the floor, splitting his head. Blurry-eyed, he’d got back up to fight. He hadn’t remembered anything else until he’d woken to his mother bathing his head. He’d seen she’d been crying. He saw the marks on her neck.
As nothing more than a kid, he’d learned there was no difference between the third species, proclaimed to be the enemy, and the real monsters – the human monsters – who had been in their home that night.
Monsters he would never be one of.
And he sure as fuck wasn’t that small, helpless child anymore.
He snatched his gaze across to Dice, now pinning the other woman beneath him, the slap to her face ringing around the dim, skanky room.
‘You don’t want to be doing that,’ Eden said, keeping his tone as calm and tempered as he could manage as he turned to face Dice. ‘Not if you want this to be over quick for you.’
Dice stopped, his fist already drawn back to, this time, strike harder. He looked back over his shoulder at him. Looked at Eden’s hip where he’d flicked his knife from its encasement. Dice exhaled tersely as if in disbelief, his glare quickly locking back on Eden’s again.
Wide-eyed, the woman beneath Dice took the opportunity of his distraction to wriggle out from underneath him, to back up against the headboard.
‘What the fuck is this?’ Dice asked, glancing from the blade to glare into Eden’s eyes. He eased off the bed to turn to face him fully. ‘Reece,’ he said, his tone dangerously low, his eyes darkening. ‘You don’t want to be doing this, buddy,’ he warned with the drawl of a patronising negotiator. ‘Just get back to the job and maybe we can pretend this little thing between you and me didn’t just happen.’
‘I can’t do that,’ Eden said, ‘just as I couldn’t stab you in the back or slit your throat from behind – because I want to look you in the eyes when I do this.’
Dice swept his tongue across his lower lip as he eased away from the bed. ‘You want to play the big bastard, huh?’ he said, his eyebrows raised, something between fear and outrage now in his wide eyes. ‘You want to take me on? Well, you’re dead here in Blackthorn,’ he said, slipping a knife from his own jeans. ‘I want to look in your eyes when you realise that.’ He looked back down at the knife Eden held. ‘You’d better know how to use that.’
Eden flashed him a hint of an insincere smile. ‘I was going to say the same to you.’
Dice made the mistake of making the first move. Two attack blows later, three defensive from Eden’s retaliation, and Dice was already looking even more wary. He backed up for a moment, rubbed the back of his knife-holding hand across his face, ridding himself from the faint perspiration already coating his forehead from the exertion, the stuffiness of the room, the adrenaline pumping in his veins.
‘Are you toying with me, Eden?’ Dice asked, his wary stance, the flare in his eyes making it clear to Eden that his own composure, his steady glare, was unnerving Dice even more than the display of his proficiency.
Eden gave him a small shrug of indifference. ‘I’m going to make it quick but it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it.’
Dice took a small step back, bracing himself. ‘That’s one hell of a fucking poker face, Reece,’ he said. ‘Shame I’m going to have to slice it up.’
Eden licked the underside of his teeth through his open, fleeting smile. ‘Then get on with it and stop playing with me, Dice. I’m starting to think you’ve got more of a taste for me than you have for these two women here.’
Dice bared his teeth. He lunged forward. Three more attack strikes, one superficially slicing through Eden’s T-shirt, and Eden plunged the blade deep into Dice’s side. And twisted.
Dice’s knife clattered to the floorboards as he hung on Eden’s blade like damp clothing on a washing line.
Eden’s grasp on the back of his head was brutal as he withdrew his knife to puncture him again, this time taking out a major organ.
Dice was already losing consciousness and, just as Eden wanted, he was looking him right in the eyes. Only there wasn’t an iota of regret that stared back at him.
‘Fucking dues,’ was the last thing Dice said, managing a glimpse of a smile before he slumped to the floor.
Eden let him fall as he retracted his blade, stared down at him for a moment, letting the tension in his chest ease.
He glanced back at the woman Dice had been attacking just as her eyes widened.
Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) Page 35