Revelations: The Black Chalice (Revelations Series Book 1)

by Lauretta Hignett

  “Bullshit.”

  He laughed. “Of course I did. I was worried.”

  “Why were you worried?”

  “Ummm, because you almost had your throat slit by a madman only one short hour ago?”

  “And I survived.” I shrugged.

  “Is that what you’re good at?”

  “Surviving? I’m the best at surviving,” I muttered.

  Alex turned to me fully, moving his whole body, giving me the benefit of his broad chest and the staggering width of his shoulders. He stared at me, hard, and waited until I gave him my full attention.

  The look in his eyes was odd. If I had to name it, I’d called it obvious smoldering.

  “Tell me,” he breathed out, oozing sexiness. His breath felt like sweet silk. His scent was warm—familiar and enticing, like chocolate and fireworks.

  But I just stared back. “Are you okay? You’re looking at me kinda intense. Do I have something in my teeth?”

  “Uh, no.” Alex frowned slightly and shuffled back a little. “I was just… interested, I guess.”

  “I’m not buying it. You’re working too hard to be nonchalant.”

  Alex swung back to me straightaway, glaring slightly. He smoothed his expression out quickly, but not before I understood—he was used to getting his own way.

  Of course he was; just look at him. If it were Clover he was questioning, she’d be giving him her bank account details right about now. Dale too, probably.

  And if the looks didn’t work, he’d just go with his charm. He would be used to charming answers out of women. That’s what he was doing now, with the smoldering glances and the flattering lines. He was trying to get information out of me.

  Unfortunately for him, my seduction buttons had been smashed to pieces a long time ago.

  But again, I felt a little sorry for him. A crazy man with a knife busted into reception, and he thought it was his fault.

  And I knew it wasn’t.

  I relented. “Look, you may have noticed that I’m not crumbling to pieces.”

  He smiled slightly. “I did notice that. You seem unusually tough.”

  “Unusually for what?”

  He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

  “You said I seemed unusually tough. For a girl, you mean?”

  “Well…. no.” A flitter of confusion drifted over his face. “Now that you mention it, some of the toughest humans I’ve ever met have been young women.”

  “You’re right about that.” I let my gaze drift back toward the pool, ignoring the mental red flag that popped up when he said humans instead of people.

  “But I got the impression that you might have had some previous trauma. I was concerned this attack might have brought up some bad memories. And, I guess, I just want to know about it. About you.”

  I bit my lip. “Of course you got the impression that I had previous trauma; I even told you that it wasn’t my first rodeo. I dealt with it, again, the best I could.”

  He stayed silent. After a long moment, my politeness default kicked in again, and my voice softened. “I’m not scared of death, and I know how to deal with pain. The worst part was getting the taste of that dude’s fingers out of my mouth.”

  Alex’s face crumpled, and he burst out laughing.

  “I’m glad I could amuse you,” I said dryly. But I couldn’t help smiling slightly. His sudden joy was a little catching. He laughed with abandon, unselfconsciously.

  He finally caught his breath. “I know it will annoy you if I say it, but your outsides don’t match your insides. Did you know that?”

  “I’ve been told that before.”

  “I bet you have. You look like a Disney princess, and act like one of those orphans from Annie. A little tough street-kitten.”

  “If you know it will annoy me if you say it, why are you saying it?” I grumbled, turning away from him.

  He let out a low chuckle. I made a show of checking my watch, which seemed to amuse him more. “Am I keeping you from something?”

  “My friends should be here soon. I’m hoping I can debrief with them before I leave.”

  He grew serious. “Where are you going?”

  “Home. For the weekend.”

  “Probably a good idea. You need to recoup.”

  “I know what I need, thank you very much.”

  He paused for a second, tight-lipped. “Look, I do have some questions for you.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Why did you lie to the police?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t lie.”

  “But you did. You lied twice.”

  I pulled my legs out of the pool and swivelled around to face him, suddenly angry. “Tell me, Mr. Arms Dealer; why did you lie to the police?”

  “What makes you think I did?”

  “You were at the pool with the judge that morning. You talked him into bedding that blonde. He died right after that.”

  “I didn’t lie; I told them I was at the pool with him, drinking the night away. I never lied.” He cocked his head to the side. “But you did.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “What I saw wouldn’t have mattered. I wasn’t supposed to be there spying on you; I just wanted to protect my own ass.” I didn’t want him to think I was trying to do him a favor. “But you never told the police what that grubby assassin said to me.”

  He furrowed his brow. “I didn’t hear him. I wasn’t listening...” Suddenly, he was studying me intensely. “Why? What did he say?”

  Dammit. I was bluffing there. I was hoping to get some answers of my own. I had no idea what the assassin was on about—talking about a vessel or something. But he could have just been calling me the C word in his own language. A bad translation, maybe.

  That thought came to me just as the tequila seemed to hit a sweet spot. My head was now nicely fuzzy. And as soon as I noticed that, my arms started to tingle a little; my legs felt like they were turning to liquid in the water. I was comfortably numb.

  “Look,” I said, taking a deep breath, bringing myself back to the present moment. “I’ve always been a magnet for drama; as much as I try and avoid it, the crazy seems to manifest itself around me. Violence, pain. I can’t seem to get away from it. If there’s a lunatic around, he’s going to make a beeline for me.” I looked Alex dead in the eye. “I get the feeling that you’re the same; I can sense an energy around you. It might be why you’ve chosen your occupation. Violence and war are your trade.”

  He was very still. “Maybe,” he said softly.

  My politeness kicked in again. “No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “I don’t know why that guy attacked me. I might not have been his original target.”

  “Do you think it might be because of me?” He sounded offended.

  Bingo. That’s why he’d come to talk to me. He thought this attack might be his fault.

  “Maybe, maybe not. I guess we’ll never know. He didn’t seem to feel like talking very much. Because, you know, of how he chose to munch on cyanide rather than tell you his name.”

  He quirked the side of his mouth up a little. “How many of these have you had?” He tapped the side of my margarita.

  “It’s my third one.”

  “We should get you another one.”

  “My lips don’t get any looser, just so you know.” I took a long pull on the straw, and the air gurgled through it as I sucked up the last of the margarita. “I’ll share what I want to.”

  “I understand.” He got up anyway, unfolding himself smoothly, and he strolled easily to the bar.

  The swarm of rowdy night staff parted before him easily. He walked straight toward Toby, who was already fixing me another drink. Alex pulled a beer for himself while Toby shook out my margarita from the blender; nobody stopped him. What the guests want, the guests get.

  I sighed. It was true what I said about money making people miserable. But sometimes it would be nice to get whatever I wanted.

  I let my head r
oll back until I could see the thick jungle behind me. There was something so therapeutic about the broad leaves and lush greenness around me. I felt like I was cocooned in Mother Nature’s arms. I soaked it all up, breathing deeply. The air on my skin felt like silk.

  There was a small movement behind me, and out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a tiny figure. It looked like a flying baby—no, it was a chubby little cherub, with yellow curls and little silver wings, flitting between the branches of a palm tree. It only took a tiny fraction of a second, but I swore I could see the little creature glare at me with golden eyes.

  I moved my head and squinted: There was nothing there.

  Great, now I was hallucinating. Toby must be putting shots of his special Green Fairy Absinthe in my drinks again. Bless his heart.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping to clear them. When I opened them again, Alex was walking back toward me. He crouched beside me and unloaded the goods in his hands—a beer for himself, my margarita, as well as two shots of tequila and two hunks of lime.

  I wasn’t surprised he could carry all that in his big hands. I took the shot in my mouth before he could offer, and sucked on the sweet, tingly lime wedge, squeezing my eyes shut at the burn as the tequila went down.

  Alex was looking at me with a gleam in his eyes. “I thought I was going to have to talk you into doing that shot with me,” he said, and he threw back his own glass and swallowed. He made no move to pick up his lime wedge, so I palmed it, and squeezed the juicy flesh with my teeth.

  “I’m not superhuman,” I muttered. “I’m still allowed to drown my sorrows if something terrible happens to me.” I gave him a wobbly nudge. The alcohol was giving me too much confidence. I don’t think I’d ever been voluntarily this close to a straight man in a few good years without trembling in fear. But Alex was less of a man, more of a god. It was easy to think of him as a fantasy rather than a flesh-and-blood human. “So, go on,” I said to him. “What did you think that guy was here for?”

  Alex huffed out an exasperated breath. “Look, to be honest, I assumed that he was here for me too. In… in my line of work, I do attract the crazy. Like you, I’m used to it.” He took a long sip of his beer, draining half of it. He stared at the label appreciatively for a second, and turned back to me. “But you don’t deserve that kind of crazy.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “So what you said about it not being your first rodeo…”

  “You want to know how many times I’ve been attacked? A lot,” I said flatly. I took a sip through my straw, but the margarita was thick and slushy, and I wasn’t getting enough into my mouth as I wanted to.

  He probably should have brought more shots. I ditched the straw and took a big gulp.

  “How many times?”

  “Five. I’ve had a knife to my throat twice. Three times, now.” Why was I telling him this?

  “Who? Your family? Did you grow up in a rough neighborhood?”

  “Yes and no. The first time was my dad.” I stared in the milky-blue depths of the pool, feeling curiously detached from my body.

  I’d talked about it so many times, with Margot, with my therapists, counselors, the police. It didn’t get easier. But it was less painful, which somehow is not the same thing.

  Alex’s voice was soft. “What did he do?”

  I took a deep breath, resigned to telling this stranger my story. “It started when I went through puberty. I was an only child, and we lived in a nice neighbourhood in Tasmania. My dad worked a lot; he had his own car dealership. He was always an asshole—he hit my mother; he was very controlling. I didn’t see him very often, but when I did, he treated me like his little princess… I loved it, but in retrospect he did it mostly to hurt my mother, I think. But when I started becoming a teenager, he started paying me… extra attention.”

  I could see the thunderclouds in Alex’s face. He held his hands loosely down his sides, but I saw that his fists were clenched.

  If Alex wanted to know, I would tell him everything. “He didn’t do anything, apart from slap me a few times if I defied him, which was normal. For us, I mean. But after I turned thirteen, there were looks, and suggestions… my mother didn’t like it.” I gave a humourless bark of laughter. “Apparently, despite everything he did, desiring me was her line in the sand.”

  Even after all this time, the injustice scorched me. I bit my lip.

  “And one night, after an all-day whiskey bender at a work function, he came home and attacked me. I screamed and fought. My mother came in and screamed and fought too. I got away.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “To a neighbor’s. They were used to it. They’d called the cops on my dad a hundred times for beating my mother. But this time, when the police came to see me, it was to take me away.”

  “Why?” His voice was gentle.

  “My father strangled my mother. She was dead. When the cops came, he tried to shoot his way out. They killed him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Lots of people say that. I’m sorry too. Not that he’s dead, though.” I shrugged. “Anyways, to bring you up to speed, I got put in emergency foster care, but one of the other kids in care attacked me, too. I managed to leave teeth marks in him. I was moved to a group house, where one of the caregivers had a crack at me. That was the first time I had a knife to my throat.” I grimaced. “I’d learned a lot about self defense by then, and the knife ended up in his eyeball.” I frowned. “Not through my badassery, to be honest. I screamed so loud I burst his eardrum; he lifted the knife to rub his ear and jabbed himself in the eye.”

  Alex’s lip curled up again. Despite the obvious rage he felt on my behalf, which was admirable, he still thought I was amusing.

  I carried on. “Then, there was a stroke of luck, when Margot tracked me down.”

  “Who’s Margot?”

  “My aunt. My mother’s younger sister. She escaped from their dad when she was very, very young. My grandfather was the same as my father—domineering, controlling, violent. My mother got married to my dad straight out of school to escape him, but unfortunately married a carbon copy of him.” I gave a humourless laugh. “Margot did her own escaping, but instead of getting married like her sisters did, she just ran away. She changed her name, moved north to Queensland, and put herself through medical school.” My adoration for Margot overwhelmed me for a second. She was my honest-to-God hero. “My other aunts refused to take me in when my parents died. But the authorities didn’t even know about Margot: my mother and her sisters were forbidden to speak of her after she ran away. But she always tried to keep tabs on her nieces, hoping she could save us one day. It took three weeks before she got word that my parents were dead. She tracked me down in an afternoon.”

  In my mind’s eye, I remembered that day when she’d walked into the foster home; I knew immediately she was my savior. “She was still wearing green scrubs,” I said out loud. “She’d walked straight out of surgery and got on a plane to Tasmania to come and get me. I went with her without hesitation, without a backward glance.”

  “And you lived happily ever after?”

  I barked with laughter. Bitter laughter. “I’m still me, remember. I transferred to a local school, but the boys there looked at me; I hated it. I didn’t want anyone to look at me ever again.”

  Alex nodded, a hard look to his eye. “It’s understandable. You were traumatized.”

  “And I got through school. Things got better. I even tried dating in my final year at high school. Tommy,” I said his name roughly. “He was my friend, and he was gentle.” I swallowed roughly. “Until he wasn’t.” I took a sip of my drink, willing the memory away. “But I got away. And the last attack was almost two years ago. The less we say about that one, the better.”

  “Eve, I’m sorry. It’s awful, but it’s not unusual.”

  I held up my hand to stop him. “I know what you’re going to say. It’s like an alcoholic’s kid choosing an alcoholic partner. Like my mother, getting married to my father. Despite
them hating it, it’s what they know, so they’re subconsciously drawn to it. I had a violent father, so I’m subconsciously drawn to violent people.”

  “Well…”

  “I’m not like that. I hate it.”

  He just nodded.

  “And Margot hates it. She grew up in that environment too, at least until she was a teenager, and she ran away.”

  “So she doesn’t have a partner? She’s a spinster?”

  “Margot’s gay,” I explained patiently. “And you can forget all the stuff that you’re thinking.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “You’re thinking that Margot’s being gay was her coping mechanism for escaping patriarchal violence. That she’s made it so she does not need to be around men in any capacity at all. But you’d be wrong.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that.”

  “Right. You ‘know people.’ ” I put my hands up to make the quotation marks.

  “I do,” Alex said with a slight smile. “And I know that being gay is not a choice anyone has the luxury of making.”

  “She was lucky.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Even in this day and age, I don’t think the gay community would think of it that way.”

  “I do,” I replied honestly. “She doesn’t desire men. I still do, but I’m scared of them. For good reason.”

  There was a loaded silence. Alex broke it first.

  “But you’re happily here with me, telling me all this.”

  I nodded, my head starting to feel very heavy. My chin bounced off my chest. Whoops, I’d overdone that last nod. “You caught me at the right time. The adrenaline is washing away, I feel giddy. And the tequila is taking its place. It’s loosening my tongue. You could attack me right now, and you’d break me in two.”

  Even though his face kept blurring in front of my eyes, I could still make out the sadness that washed over him. He felt sorry for me. Great. My politeness made a late comeback. “But you won’t attack me. You’re different. You’re not like the others...”

  The pity in his eyes melted away, replaced by another hard, assessing stare. I tried to hold it, but my eyes kept sliding across one another. It was getting harder to focus.