by Amity Cross
Finally, we were in sync.
* * *
Just like that.
QUAKE
#8 The Beat and The Pulse
1
Juliette
There was something romantic about new beginnings.
Not the kind of beginning where you moved house or took a new job, but the one where you completely reinvented yourself from head to toe.
A new wardrobe and hairstyle were like bulletproof armor, giving you confidence you never knew you had. A change of scenery was like a holiday you hadn’t realized you needed. A complete and total reinvention was like a breath of fresh air that dislodged the cobwebs and stagnation you’d been wading through your entire life.
Or it could be a mediocre Band-Aid covering a festering wound that could pop at any moment, but life was like that, I suppose. Unpredictable. Violent. Or just completely fucking bonkers for no reason at all.
My name was Juliette Spicer, and I’d gone through a metamorphosis. It was well overdue considering the shit my existence had become—bottoming out to the fifth layer of Hell and all that. I reckon subbasement five was pretty damn deep considering I didn’t know how many layers of Hell there actually were. I could only go up from there.
So where was I? That was right. Metamorphosis.
Juliette Spicer, currently stationed in Melbourne, Australia, after exiting her cocoon, much to her family’s shock and horror. I was now on the other side of the country, leaving my depressing and complicated past behind—along with the empty box that used to contain the hair dye I’d slathered on my sun-kissed, salty, beachified, super chic, blonde hair, turning it into the yang to my previous yin. White to black. Light to dark. I now looked like Morticia Adams, but that was the point. I didn’t look a thing like how Juliette Spicer used to. I looked like Juliette Spicer badass, who could cut you with a single look and all round superhero of her own destiny.
New life, new job, new city, new look. Metamorphosis.
A week into my new job and things were going amazing. Better than I’d expected, to be honest. I’d never moved cities before, let alone worked in an office that housed my dream career. As an assistant to Jade Forsyth, the head of marketing for Slattery Press—only the best publishing house for genre fiction in the country—I was only a few years of hard, backbreaking work away from landing the crème de la crème of my professional dreams. Senior Acquisitions Editor. That was where the magic happened.
I just had to keep doing what I was doing, and I would get there, no matter my age, background, or past experiences. I had to. Mel would’ve wanted it.
“Juliette,” came the airy voice of my boss. “Hold my calls for the next hour and a half. I’ve got a lunch meeting with Alexis.”
“Alexis Storm?” I asked, my eyes almost popping out of my head. “The romance author?”
Jade smiled and shook her head in amusement, her immaculately styled ginger curls bobbing as she moved. “For twenty-eight, you sure do have stars in your eyes.”
“What can I say?” I replied, bouncing up and down in my chair. “I’m a late bloomer.”
It was an odd thing, being an assistant to a woman who was almost a year younger than I was, but Jade had landed a job just like mine right out of University and had skyrocketed to the top in record time. She was the kind of woman journalists wrote inspirational articles about in Cosmopolitan magazine, then did a six-page editorial on the power clothes they wore to the office. Her style was straight off the runway, and I swore the emerald linen dress that currently hung off her willowy frame was vintage Dior. Then there were her shoes…black strappy heels. Were they Manolo’s? It wouldn’t surprise me since her fiancé was loaded.
In comparison, I picked my outfit off the sales rack in the basement of a building on Swanston Street that sold cheap knockoffs shipped in from China. I still had a way to go if I wanted to power dress for success.
“You know, Jules, career changes are not a bad thing,” Jade said, beginning to deliver her particular brand of motivational speech, “but when you get to our age, you have to work twice as hard to get ahead. You have to find your edge, and hone it like a fucking samurai.”
I almost choked on my own spit, hearing such a foul word come out of her mouth, but no one even batted an eyelid.
“I can see one there, and that’s why I hired you over some twenty-year-old fresh out of the nappies University swaddles kids in these days.” She patted me on the head and twirled away, declaring, “Find your edge, Spicer.”
My edge? What was that supposed to mean? Was that code for ‘be a hard-ass?’ I snorted and turned back to my computer. With one eye following her as she flounced across the office, I scrolled through the list of inane tasks Jade had left for me to complete by the end of the day—get coffee at two p.m., schedule a Skype call with a new author, pick up dry-cleaning, take back the Marc Jacobs bag to David Jones and demand a refund, and pick up sample posters from the printer. What I wouldn’t give to work alongside one of Australia’s best-selling romance authors of all time. One day soon, that would be me in a silk Dior dress off to a fancy lunch with a multimillion-dollar client at one of Melbourne’s top restaurants.
In the next five years. Tops.
Once the elevator doors slid shut and Jade was out of sight and definitely not coming back anytime soon, I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the pile of bound A4 pages I’d hidden away that morning. Clutching them to my chest, I rolled my chair away from my desk and slunk through the office, but no one was watching the slightly shifty progress of an insignificant assistant.
Weaving through the haphazard arrangement of desks, I shimmied through a door at the rear, disappearing into the dark room. The blinds were drawn, though light filtered in around the edges giving the space a murky hue. Outside, I could hear the muffled humming of the city beyond, and I smiled at the furious dinging of a tram at the stop on the street below.
In the digital age, I was amazed to find a physical pile of bound printouts tucked away in a corner office used mainly for storage. It was like a big bad dungeon for neglected authors, their dreams lying on a dusty table covered in cobwebs. Their agents had shopped them around to all the major houses, and here was where the editors had flung them when they didn’t get past the first chapter, and none of them were willing to read any further or invest in a little developmental editing.
I didn’t know if it was my naivety or the stars in my eyes, but I imagined there was a rough diamond in there somewhere just waiting to be cut, polished, and packaged into the next big franchise…complete with a deal for a set of feature films—aka, The Hunger Games.
I wanted to get ahead, and if it meant sifting through the slush pile and overdosing on overwritten manuscripts bursting with purple prose, then I’d gladly OD. If I managed to discover the next Sylvia Day or J.K. Rowling, it would propel me forward in one giant leap. Besides, imagine how much my vocabulary would grow in the meantime.
Placing the manuscript back onto the pile, I picked up another that caught my eye. The Fighter. Considering Slattery published a vast catalogue of genre fiction, I wondered if this one was a sports romance or a thriller. I guess I’d find out.
Darting back to my desk, I opened the bottom drawer and slipped the manuscript into my bag, hoping no one had caught me pilfering company property. I wasn’t meant to take them home, but I had, and it was only a week in. I was setting quite the precedent.
While I was busy squirming, I almost jumped out of my skin when Hayley, another assistant, peered over the top of my monitor.
“Hey, Juliette,” she said. “We’re all going out for drinks after work tonight. You should come with. You know, celebrate the end of your first week and all.”
I didn’t like going out after dark, but I was feeling indestructible lately. Besides, I had to start facing my fears of gloomy corners sooner or later.
“Sure,” I replied. “Sounds good. Where are you going?”
“This place called BearBrass,�
�� Dom said, leaning back in his chair. He worked in marketing as a graphic designer and sat on my other side. “It’s pretty cool. It’s down on Southbank and has food and most importantly a very nice selection of alcoholic beverages.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “We usually sit outside, and you can see the river and the promenade, and there’s a nice view.”
“He’s got the hots for one of the bartenders,” Hayley said with a suggestive wink.
“Make that multiple nice views,” he said, not at all ashamed to admit he was crushing on someone. If it were me, my cheeks would be redder than the reddest red there ever was. You would be able to cook an egg on me I’d be that hot.
“I’m pretty sure he’s straight,” Hayley declared.
“That’s only because you want a ride,” he retorted with a pout.
“Count me in,” I said, smiling. “Sounds like I have to check out both views.”
We stayed out, downing jugs of margaritas and eating our fill of wood-fired pizza until nine p.m.
It was the end of February, so the days were still quite long, the sun not setting fully until almost eight p.m. The air was warm, but the breeze off the Yarra River cooled the back of my neck.
No one recognized me here. My face was just another in the crowd, my dyed black hair a nonevent. It was refreshing being able to go to the shops and not have anyone give me a wary side-eye glance like I was going to have a mental breakdown at any second or to have a concerned stranger passing on their condolences.
No one knew who Juliette Spicer was in Melbourne, no one at all, and I loved it.
Parting ways with Hayley, Dom, and a few other people from work, I crossed the river, weaving a path through the hundreds of people flowing into Flinders Street Station, and made my way toward the tram stop. It was slower than taking a train, but I enjoyed watching the comings and goings of the city out of the window.
Melbourne was a very different place than the Sunshine Coast. Up north, it was tropical all the time, but here, it was significantly less muggy, and there was no such thing as finding little green tree frogs swimming happily in your bathtub.
Hopping onto a waiting tram at the end of Elizabeth Street, I rode it through the city, then all the way along Royal Parade, and finally, I got off a few blocks up Sydney Road in the inner city suburb of Brunswick. The closest stop to my little unit was on Albion Street, and then it was a three-minute walk to my door.
It was a really diverse part of town with its large Lebanese and Turkish population, and the Italians and Greeks resided a suburb over in Fitzroy. It was a real melting pot of cultures, which made the restaurants and takeout places pretty darn tasty. The couple who lived three doors down from me in my block of flats always had spirited arguments in Turkish, the language sounding passionate even when they were screaming obscenities at one another.
Stepping onto the footpath, I began walking toward home. When the haze of flashing lights from a police car caught my gaze, my heart twisted, and I stumbled. An image splintered through my mind of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl stained in blood, and I almost popped, the contents of my stomach heaving.
“Miss, you need to take the opposite footpath,” a policeman said, gesturing for me to cross the street.
Glancing over the line of police tape, I was dazzled by the lights. Red, blue, red, blue…
Blinking, I shook away the image of the night the same colors had flashed through the windows of my childhood home, bathing the front yard in unnatural light.
“Miss,” the policeman said again, ushering me to the side.
“What happened?” I asked, the words spilling out of my mouth before I could stop myself. I’d hated all the questions, the rubbernecking, the speculation, and the assumptions… It was hypocritical of me to be even asking.
“A young woman was attacked,” he replied just as I spotted the white sheet covering the unmistakable shape of a human body. “I would advise you to go straight home.”
She was dead. I didn’t have to be a genius to understand. She was attacked and killed right here, just off the side of a busy road where thousands of people walked and drove past every day. Where trams rolled up and down, picking up and dropping off women just like the one lying underneath that sheet. A place I lived three minutes away from.
My gaze took in the little numbered yellow signs marking evidence on the footpath, and I swallowed my rising fear as I saw her blood staining the ground.
“Miss,” the policeman began, the sound of his voice snapping me out of my daze.
Backing away, I stepped off the footpath and onto the street, making a break for it between a lull in the Friday night traffic. Hurrying down my street, I fumbled in my bag for my keys, holding them between my fingers like a weapon, ready to stab anyone who might be lurking in the shadows.
Turning into the unit block, my hands shook as I unlocked my front door, my entire body trembling. I couldn’t be sure no one was watching. What if it was the same guy who’d taken Mel from me? What if he wanted me, too? As I pushed into my flat, my mind swirled with every possible scenario, all of them bad.
Locking the door, I rattled it to make sure the latch had caught. Then I flicked on the lights and moved into the bedroom to check the windows were locked and the blinds drawn. I did the same in the bathroom and then the kitchen before dragging my tiny two-seater dining table in front of the back door, wedging the back of one of the chairs under the handle.
Pulling the biggest knife from the block on the kitchen counter, I stilled, listening to the sounds of the city. The muffled chattering of the neighbor’s television filtered through the brick wall, and the tree out in the yard rustled as a cool breeze began to pick up.
The day had been hot, reaching thirty-five degrees Celsius, and I could try to fool myself that the sweat trickling down my back was due to the dry heat of an Australian summer, but it wasn’t.
Kicking off my sandals—the pair I’d bought on sale at Target the day before in an attempt to upgrade my power outfits—I padded into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. A thump from next door made my heart skip a beat, and I slipped into the bathtub, clutching the knife in my hand. Curling up in the corner, I tensed, my shuddering breaths sounding like a brewing storm in my ears and my heartbeat the peals of thunder.
He came for my sister, and now he was coming for me. I closed my eyes, and all I could see was blood and her eyes…her open eyes that held nothing.
People always tell the story of the ones who were taken too soon, but what about those who were left behind? Who helps the living?
No one. No one helps us.
2
Caleb
Looking through the office window, I watched the front door of the studio with dread.
The message I’d gotten half an hour before had ruined an otherwise brilliant morning, and now all I could see was a swamp of despair when I looked out over the boxing studio that had become my second home.
Beat was probably the most infamous fighter gym in Melbourne, Australia. Many a fighter had come out of this place and gone on to become champions. Not only in boxing but mixed martial arts. Both sports were funded by high rollers and brought in a lot of cash for the big hitters.
The studio was small, but it had a great setup. Separate rooms for weights and cardio, a large matted area with bags, a full-sized boxing ring, a galley kitchen with an in-house nutritionist, and kitted out change rooms. It was a fighter’s wet dream in here, and I was the guy who oversaw the lot. With a twenty-year legacy of brilliance behind the place, it was hard to stuff it up.
Being the manager of Beat wasn’t quite the same as being a middleweight boxing champion, but it was good enough for an injured son of a bitch like me. What recourse did I have when every doctor in the business told me my fighting days were over? It was this or stand in the line for unemployment benefits every fortnight.
I was sure it wasn’t quite that dramatic, but it felt like it. For a man who defined hi
mself with his fists, not being able to get into a ring without the risk of permanent paralysis from the waist down was akin to cutting off his balls with a rusty butter knife.
Glancing at my phone again, I checked the time. T-minus five minutes until the biggest bastard in the world walked through the roller door and took a giant dump over everyone’s hopes and dreams. If there were an award for perfectly aimed insults, he’d win hands down every single year until he kicked the bucket.
The moment I saw the Mercedes pull up outside, I shoved out of the safe haven of the office and thundered down the stairs. No use dragging my heels.
Waiting just inside the studio, I ignored the curious glances being fired at me from the guys training in the ring and crossed my arms over my chest. Listening to the pounding of fists against leather in the background, I used the familiar songs of male peacocking to calm my nerves. Aggression in a controlled environment was my stress relief.
I reined in my attitude the moment Vincent Carmichael unfolded himself from the back of the car and strode across the footpath to meet me, his stature and refined appearance marking him as a powerful man.
“Dad,” I said briskly. “If I had known you were coming—”
“You would have run away with your tail between your legs,” he said, cutting me off.
That was Dad. Heartless and full of shit.
It was all about how big your balls were and how much money you could bet on them with that guy. Seeing me standing in a small boxing studio in an out-of-the-way suburb of Melbourne instead of a ring in Vegas with a title belt slung over my shoulder was eating him up inside. Give the guy a chance, and he’d have me there in a blink of an eye…no matter the consequences.
