Each time the creature moved, Jessie sidestepped in front of it, blocking its view again. This time it looked up through its hair as if sensing where her eyes were, the vacuous holes staring back at her.
‘That’s right,’ Jessie said quietly. ‘You fucking try it.’
The creature started to sway as if realising the extent of the opposition, as if building its attack.
‘Eden,’ Jessie called out. ‘Tell me you’re almost there.’
‘Almost there,’ he called out.
Then she heard a clunk.
‘We’re out!’ she heard him say.
There was another scamper of feet behind her, the lycan young no doubt exiting one by one.
The creature snapped in its impatience, its feet lifting from the ground. It pelted forward only for Jessie to unleash the full canister of salt at it. With a shriek it evaporated.
Jessie instantly dropped the canister as she felt Eden’s arm wrapped around her waist, tugging her towards the door.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, his voice soft, warm, comforting against her ear.
He shoved Jessie through the door before him.
The lycan young had waited for them, their wide eyes and impatient feet telling her they were ready to run as instructed. She grabbed the hands of two, Eden sweeping one of the smallest up in his arms, encouraging another onto his back.
They ran down the back alleys, both of them intermittently checking over their shoulders to see if they were being followed.
‘Pummel won’t let us go that easily,’ she called out to Eden. ‘We should have finished the job. The minute he’s conscious again…’
‘I know,’ Eden said. ‘Just keep moving.’
Because he knew as well as she did that they weren’t talking about being pursued on foot. They knew they were talking about whatever remained of Pummel’s crew pursuing them on the bikes – pursuing them and the young.
Jessie tightened her grip on the tiny hands as she followed Eden through back alley after back alley, early light casting an ethereal grey glow on the horizon.
They’d find somewhere to hide out. Somewhere to talk. Somewhere to forge their plan.
They turned left and right, cutting across the street. They took another sharp right.
Jessie flinched the same time as Eden did, Eden almost stumbling back with the force.
The creature held the con to the floor, almost engulfing him with its body twice the size of the helpless male beneath it. With limbs that resembled those of a preying mantis, the four thorn-like hooks that protruded from them were rammed into the fleshy parts of the con’s arms and legs as it pinned him to the floor. At first it looked locked in a kiss, but Jessie quickly realised it was working its way through his tongue.
Worse, it looked almost done.
It turned its head to look at them – a head that almost looked human had it not been so contorted. A couple of the lycan young instantly screamed.
It ripped its hooks out of the con, its rubbery limbs slapping against concrete as it turned to face them.
Eden released the child he was holding to the floor, lowered slowly to his haunches let the other down off his back. ‘Run,’ he said softly to Jessie.
‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘Get the children away from here,’ he said, his gaze locked on the creature that was carefully weighing him up.
But as she glanced over her shoulder, four were already backing away, two younger ones led by two older ones, their instincts kicking in over their fear.
‘Move,’ she said quietly to them. ‘Hide. We’ll find you.’
She looked back the second the creature lunged at Eden. He drew his knife from his pocket as he fell onto his back.
There were screams behind them as the young ran.
Eden stabbed the creature clean in the throat, but even that didn’t stop it, the knife sucked into the folds of its flesh. It seemed to be absorbing every ounce of his now superhuman strength as Eden struggled to keep its head away, its tongue leaving a mucus trail along his cheek as he punched and punched it again.
Jessie was instantly behind it, yanking it off him, its slimy, rubbery flesh making it difficult to keep a hold of as she struggled to pin it to the wall. Its tongue lashed at her face as it struggled beneath her grip, as she strained to hold it there, giving Eden time to get back to his feet.
Jessie grimaced and cried out as it hooked its lower limb into her leg, tearing through her flesh in an attempt to unbalance her and gain the advantage.
But Eden was immediately next to her, pinning its upper left limb against the wall as Jessie did the same with the right. She braced herself despite the pain ripping through her leg as Eden plunged the knife into its side again and again.
As she looked down, she saw Tuly had wrapped herself around the limb that had attached itself to Jessie. She fearlessly worked on the hook embedded in Jessie’s flesh, finally freeing it before falling back with the force.
Jessie flashed her a grateful smile. ‘Go!’ she yelled at her.
‘I remember,’ Tuly declared, struggling back to her feet, ‘the name they mentioned. It was Throme. “Make sure Throme comes good”, that’s what I heard one of them say.’
Eden faltered beside her, the creature nearly tearing itself from the wall. ‘What?’ he said, staring at the young lycan. ‘What did you say?’
‘I’m good with names,’ Tuly shouted over the creature’s gruff protests. ‘I listen – a lot. I just forgot.’
‘Good girl, now go!’ Jessie said, slamming the creature back against the wall.
Eden ploughed the knife back into its side, only now with a renewed fervency, a glaze of anger in his eyes, until eventually it stilled, fell lax in their arms, the weight of it forcing them to let it go.
They both stumbled backwards.
Jessie fell against the wall. She caught her breath before examining her leg.
‘Let me look,’ Eden said, catching his breath too, falling to his knees to check the wound.
‘It’ll take no time to heal,’ she said. ‘It’s just throbbing like hell.’
He held her gaze before looking back over his shoulder at the bloodied mess they’d defeated. ‘Quite the team,’ he said looking back at her. ‘Another fourth species?’
She nodded.
‘If they’re here to stay, I’m fucking moving out,’ he declared, grabbing her hand and leading her towards the alley.
But his humour couldn’t mask the concern in his eyes, not from her.
‘There’s only one Throme I’ve heard of,’ she said, surprised he hadn’t already brought it up. ‘The head of the Global Council.’
‘We need to keep moving,’ he said. ‘Try and catch up with them.’
But her hand fell lax. She took a step back. ‘Sirius,’ she said, almost on a whisper. ‘The Dog Star is also known as Sirius.’ She snapped her gaze back to his. ‘Eden…’ she said, knowing she didn’t need to add explanation or reveal her train of thought. Her train of thought that maybe the lycans weren’t the ones to start this: The Global Council were.
Eden held her gaze for a moment but he said nothing before reaching for her hand again. ‘We’ll find the children and then we’ll talk.’
But the second they reached the opening, they recoiled backwards, the bike barely missing them.
They both froze. The bike stopped. The rider looked over his shoulder at them.
‘Shit,’ Eden hissed.
‘The kids,’ she said.
‘We find them now and we’ll lead him straight to them,’ he declared. He looked across at her as the bike spun around. ‘Can you still run?’
She nodded. ‘As fast as you can keep up.’
Her leg throbbed, but it didn’t hold her back, her jaw clenched with grit determination as she ran alongside Eden, clearing obstacles at the same rate as him, both knowing the bike that roared behind them was all but clipping their tail.
They took a sharp right and a sharp left, making it
as difficult as possible, chucking whatever obstacles they could in its way. Cutting across the street they looked left to see there was another, the rider revving up his engine as soon as he caught sight of them.
They ploughed into the alley directly opposite, taking the most narrow gaps they could, ducking through wire-mesh fencing before clearing the next.
‘Four,’ Jessie yelled out as they kept running. ‘I can hear four different engines. They’re cornering us off. They know this place inside out. There’s bound to be others on foot. The roof. We could head up to the roof and lose the bikes at least.’
‘And have them wait for us below?’ Eden shouted back. ‘Losing them is the only way.’
‘We can take them! You know what my tears have done to you, don’t you? That’s why you were so glib about taking on Pummel.’
‘Not glib,’ he yelled. ‘Cornered. Never show weakness when you’re cornered.’
But another bike veered into the alley in front of them, the back tyre skidding behind it, the other revving up from behind.
Eden caught a hold of her hand, taking a sharp left. He yanked further obstacles into the path before taking a right into the abandoned factory.
But another bike was already at the opening beyond, forcing them to double back as its engine roared through towards them.
Jessie tugged Eden right down a narrow lane, one that the bike would be crazy to pursue them down. But it did.
They took a right and another left, past graffiti-stained walls, both desperately searching the wire-mesh wall to their left for gaps.
‘This way,’ Jessie said, grabbing Eden’s hand, taking a left. They ran down the back of the houses, down another alley, the bikes in hot pursuit.
Jessie came to a standstill behind the wall, urging Eden to do the same.
‘We have to keep running,’ he said, attempting to pull her from the wall.
‘I have an idea.’
He frowned, but didn’t argue, plastering himself to the wall beside her.
She counted down the seconds as she heard the bike approach, closed her eyes for a brief moment, then stepped out in front of it.
She slammed her foot sideways onto the tyre, simultaneously grabbing hold of the handles, and crouched.
The abrupt standstill threw the cyclist high over her head. The bike nearly did a 180 flip with the force of its stop, but slammed back down onto its back, the force of Jessie’s grip bringing it back to the ground unaffected.
She looked across at Eden, his eyebrows raised.
‘Fuck,’ he hissed in admiration.
‘You can ride, I take it?’
He grinned. ‘You even have to ask?’
Eden revved the engine as she wrapped herself around the back of him. They skidded out onto the main street but it wasn’t long before two more bikes caught up with them.
Eden navigated the bike skilfully, opting to take the alleys again as Jessie kept a watchful eye over her shoulder.
They took two out along the way – one hitting a wall head on, another skidding and becoming entangled with a wire-mesh fence.
They sped out of the alley and across the road, startling another who immediately skidded out of control.
They ploughed into another alley, ducking under low girders, skirting abandoned cars except for the one Eden decided to skim up and over in an attempt to lose the rider behind. They mounted ramps, leaping over bins and discarded rubbish, Eden losing two more pursuers, one diving head first into an explosion of discarded wood, another hitting fallen debris and sending his tyres spinning out of control.
But another caught up again, closing in on them.
Jessie stared up as they passed through scaffolding.
‘Keep going,’ she said in Eden’s ear, hoping his reactions wouldn’t be quick enough to do anything but.
Tightening her thighs around his, she reached up, releasing her grip on him only as she grabbed the bar above.
She spun three-sixty twice to get momentum, the biker racing toward her not seeing her quick enough to work out what she was going to do. As Eden skidded to a standstill somewhere ahead, she slammed the pursuer clean in the face with both feet, knocking him off the bike, the bike hurtling towards Eden in a sideways skid until he moved out of its way.
Seeing the unnatural angle of the biker’s head, satisfied he wasn’t going to get up again, Jessie turned to face Eden.
She wiped her hand across her forehead as she drew level with him.
‘Now you’re just showing off,’ he said, adoration glinting in his eyes as she remounted the bike. ‘Though a little heads-up next time would be good.’
‘If you think I’m going to start being accountable to you,’ she said, easing astride the bike, locking her arms around his waist again, ‘think again.’
Eden revved up the engine again, spinning them out of the alley and back onto the main street.
38
They searched until dawn split the horizon, Eden and Jessie intermittently switching from the bike to hunt for the kids on foot.
‘I can’t even sense them,’ Jessie said, her hands low on her hips as she turned a hundred and eighty degrees to look in the opposite way down the alley.
‘They’re long gone,’ Eden said. ‘They’ve probably headed straight for home. I hope to fuck they stick together.’
Jessie turned to face him again. There was genuine concern in his eyes as he too gave the surroundings the once over before squinting up at the rooftops against the early morning light. He cupped his hands behind his neck, let out a quiet sigh, the light breeze toying with his T-shirt as he stood braced.
As his gaze met hers again, she remained fixed to the spot. ‘I need to beat them to Jask,’ she said. ‘He might not be the instigator we feared, but I still need to stop this.’
‘You really think he’s going to listen to you?’
‘I have to try.’
Eden scanned the surroundings again. ‘Let’s go somewhere and talk.’ He looked back at her. ‘Somewhere private.’
‘We don’t have time.’
‘Those kids are on foot. It’ll take them at least an hour and a half to get to the north. You’ll be there in a third of that time on the bike.’
‘The pack needs to be out there finding them.’
‘It’s almost daylight. They stand the best chance this time of the morning as long as they stay vigilant. They would have been trained. Just ten minutes, Jessie, come on.’
He kicked the stand back off the bike, revving up the engine as he waited for her.
With another glance over her shoulder, Jessie mounted the back of it, Eden taking off as soon as she wrapped her arms around his waist.
He took a steady pace back out onto the road, still watching for any sign of small figures in the buildings’ recesses, or scampering through side alleys. But the south side of Blackthorn was deserted, its desolation exacerbated by the ominous glow of the encroaching light. But instead of heading to the hub border, closer to the north, Eden did an about turn, picking up speed as he headed to the upper outskirts of the south.
Jessie tapped on his shoulder to get his attention, but he remained focused on the road, his hands locked on the handlebars.
He slowed his pace only as he pulled down what was once a residential street. He tucked the bike into a side alley alongside an end-terrace house before tapping her thigh to dismount. She looked ahead at the dead end and across her shoulder at the barren wasteland that stretched beyond the low mesh fence. A few feet behind it lay a disused, rusted rail track, the breeze altering the shade of the long, dry tufts of grass. Beyond that lay walls – walls she knew bordered Blackthorn with Lowtown.
It was a residential street like so many others in the area – back-to-back houses and courtyards in what would have once been a thriving area: children’s bikes and scooters left abandoned on the kerb, the sound of adults talking and laughing in doorways, and maybe even birdsong too, filling the air. Because in her dim and distant memories, s
he remembered it. She remembered what life had once been like. Now nothing stirred but the breeze in the silence of the enforced new world.
She flinched as Eden nudged past her. She followed him over the low wall as he led the way into the small porch and pushed open the unhinged door into the derelict house.
It was colder inside than out, not helped by the tiled floor. The hallway was tight, the bare staircase ahead narrow, aided only by a single rail to the right. A glimmer of light shone from whatever room lay directly at the top, but Eden remained downstairs, taking the first door to the left, into what would have once been the lounge.
Once she’d joined him inside, he closed the door behind them.
She stood scanning the shadows, the strangeness of being out of the row that had been her home for so many decades, let alone being stood in such unfamiliar surroundings, anchoring her to the spot. The mustiness of disuse lingered in the air, dust motes, awakened by their entry, glinting in the daylight that cast shards of light from gaps in the partially drawn curtains. The carpet was as worn as the walls, blocks of discolour indicating where pictures and furniture had remained positioned for years until taken during the evacuation or, more likely, stolen in the aftermath.
Jessie wrapped her arms around herself as she looked across at the small double sofa that had been left behind, the focus of light, the surreal sense of the bare backdrop, like being in the wings of an abandoned theatre.
Unease crept up her spine. She didn’t want the doubt. Doubt was the last thing she needed, but it was there again, taking root deep in the pit of her stomach.
She turned to face Eden as he remained leaning back against the door, her necklace wrapped around his hand, the vial swaying from its silver chain. She looked back into his eyes that almost looked distant in their trouble. ‘What are we doing here, Eden?’
‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating towards the sofa.
She glanced over her shoulder at it again, then back at Eden. ‘What’s going on?’
Blood Deep (Blackthorn Book 4) Page 39