Royal Blood The Complete Collection

by Amity Cross

  I couldn’t hear any more of this. Striding forward, I wound an arm around her waist and hauled her backward.

  “Let me go,” she shrieked.

  Enraged, I flung her over my shoulder and left Weiss behind, his laughter following me up the stairs and into the distillery. Fucking hell. I wanted to snap his goddamned neck…and Mercy. Mercy fucking Reid.

  I dumped her on her feet and she stumbled before righting herself, her expression a tornado of destruction. That made the two of us because right then, I wanted to choke the life from her, tie her up, and hold her hostage. It would save her from hurting herself and destroying us. She was playing a dangerous game with a blaze she didn’t know how to put out.

  “You think that’s the correct way of conducting an interrogation?” I hissed as she turned on me. “You undermined me and gave him all the power. Fucking amateur.”

  “Don’t treat me like a fool, X,” she barked, getting up into my face.

  “It’s the same thing, over and over. You are too emotional. Emotions get you killed.”

  “It’s never going to be any different,” she snapped. “When your life is threatened, I will get emotional. I will do whatever it takes. Even if it means tearing the world apart.”

  If I wasn’t so pissed, I’d be proud of her. “And that’s final?”

  She squared her jaw. “That’s final.”

  I flexed my fingers, knowing that we had an audience with Vaughn and Hawkes the room over. I wanted to shove her up against the wall and choke the sense back into her. I wanted to fuck her into submission, but now wasn’t the time. I was the master and she was the apprentice. I was the monster…

  Closing the space between us, I stared into her eyes, making myself crystal clear in what I was about to say. “Get. Out.”

  She faltered, shock flashing across her features so fast I almost missed it. She schooled herself into blankness, her shoulders squaring.

  “X.”

  I glared up at Vaughn, who’d appeared from the other room. “Stay the fuck out of this,” I snapped.

  It was the momentary distraction that Mercy needed to back away, and when I turned my attention back on her, she’d slipped outside, the door closing behind her.

  Good. It was best she wasn’t here. I should have left her at the cottage. She had no place in this part of my life. I didn’t want her here.

  Vaughn stepped forward and I hissed at him. He raised his hands up, his palms facing out in defense. I didn’t want his help either.

  Mercy was smart enough not to be seen and not to wander when a price was out on our heads, so I dismissed her from my thoughts. Striding back across the distillery and thundering down the stairs, I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me if I was going to get Weiss to talk.

  A lot of questioning, beating and pain.

  Weiss smirked at me when I returned, closing the door behind me.

  “Lover’s tiff?” he asked and I had to restrain myself from walking over there and snapping his fat, ugly neck.

  “She has no place here with you,” I snarled.

  “You want a lead?” he asked, his head lolling back. “I’ll give you a lead.”

  I waited for whatever lie he was about to spit out at me.

  Weiss groaned, pulling his head back up. He sucked in a deep breath that rattled in his chest and began reciting an address. An address in Exeter.

  “Do you need a pen?” he asked, still trying to be a condescending jerk.

  “You know I don’t.” I stepped closer, the threat clear. “What will I find there?”

  He shrugged. “It’s eight years old. How the fuck do I know?”

  I froze, my heart painfully skipping a beat. He was giving me the one thing I didn’t want, the thing that would destroy me. I didn’t want to know about my past…this had nothing to do with Royal Blood.

  “Go there, don’t go there…who the fuck cares,” Weiss drawled. “I’m dead anyway, so why not have a little fun before you put me down?”

  He knew it would eat at me, that it would drive me mad until I followed the compulsion and went to the address. Asshole.

  Chapter 7

  Mercy

  I left the distillery enraged.

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I walked. I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t take stock of my surroundings or who was watching. I knew this was Vaughn’s territory, but it didn’t mean that Royal Blood wasn’t snooping around where their noses weren’t wanted. They were the big guns these days since the Necromancers splintered after Sykes’ untimely brain-splattering. I wasn’t entirely safe.

  The fact that X let me leave had bruised my ego.

  I knew I’d overstepped yet again but couldn’t help myself. I didn’t believe X’s tactic of ignorance was bliss, not with his constant dreaming and manic episodes when things got a bit rough. I had to make him see that the only way he’d get any peace was if he faced it.

  I walked through the streets, I hugged my coat closer, wishing I’d had the good sense to bring a scarf. The wind was beginning to pick up, and it had overtures of ice. Snow was coming, and this year, it would be a brutal winter. I hoped to fucking god it wasn’t an omen.

  The more I walked, the more my mind mulled over X. He had every right to treat me like he did after I went against his wishes. Maybe this whole thing was my problem. Not knowing everything about the man I loved was eating away at me, not him. Maybe X really had made his peace, and I was pushing for no reason. My pushing would drive us apart.

  Selfish bitch.

  I felt a prickle on the back of my neck and shivered. Stopping by a corner, I waited, glancing around at my surroundings. There were a few people on the street, the odd car or transit van passing by, which was nothing untoward for a residential area of a town like Exeter. But still, I felt uneasy and I didn’t think it had anything to do with the argument.

  Deciding the best course of action was to keep moving, I set off again, taking a left across the road and down a side street toward the town center. It was a stupid thought, but maybe I could find a pub, keep my head down and have a beer before returning to the distillery. Calm my nerves.

  I walked so far, I finally found myself at the river, crossing the bridge. I paused at the center and fleetingly cast my gaze back, catching sight of a woman glancing away quickly. She paused, just like I had, and leaned against the railing, looking out across the river below. Frowning, I moved off again, and as I did, the woman began to move with me. Maybe it was my imagination, but for someone in my position, best to assume not.

  As X always kept drumming into my head, be prepared for anything.

  The more steps I took toward the city center, the more I realized I was right. I was being followed.

  I wasn’t quite sure if it was my training or that they wanted me to know I had a tail, but I was pissed that they were there at all. I didn’t want to deal with this shit, not after arguing so horribly with X. It annoyed me more than anything, and if I was in my right mind, then perhaps I should’ve been worried someone was seeking me out.

  I stopped by the corner, glanced left then right before casting a quick look over my shoulder. I was just in time to see a shadow easing back into a doorway. Whoever it was, I was now sure they were waiting for me to approach them.

  If it wasn’t Royal Blood, then who was it? Was it one of Vaughn’s tricks? X had said, time and time again, not to trust him.

  I moved off across the street, glancing in the shop window on the opposite side of the road. My shadow came out of its hole and was in pursuit. Taking a few more steps, I glanced back, this time making them as the woman from the bridge.

  When I increased my speed, so did she. When I rounded another corner, so did she. When I stopped…so did she. It was really beginning to piss me the fuck off to the point I wanted to do away with her.

  Time to double back and see what this bitch wanted.

  Up ahead, there was a small row of shops where foot traffic had begun to increase. It was a built up area
—residential had turned into the commercial rows of High Street shops of the city center—and there would be plenty of places to linger and double back without her seeing.

  Rounding the corner ahead, I jogged to an opening further along, which turned out to be a service lane. It was here that I waited, and I peered around the corner, waiting for my tail to emerge.

  A minute later, the woman stood on the corner I’d just rounded, and looked up and down the street, obviously pissed that I’d shaken her. She turned and came in my direction, obviously deciding that this was her safest bet, but she was tracking right into the path of the monster in training.

  The moment she passed my position, I stepped out and grabbed her around the throat, pushing her into the alley. I shoved her hard against the wall, and her head cracked against the brickwork with a dull thud.

  “Who are you?” I snarled, leveling my eyes with hers.

  She was quite pretty, I supposed. Now that I could see her face clearly, she looked to be Japanese, her eyes a dark hue of brown, her hair inky black and cut into a severe line that followed her jaw. She was flawless, and I instantly hated her.

  “You can let me go,” she said in a heavy British accent. She looked Japanese, but her accent said she’d lived here her whole life.

  I dug my fingers into her throat even tighter, my free hand reaching for the knife in my pocket. “Who are you?” I asked again, flicking the blade up and pressing it against her cheek. “Why were you following me?”

  “I just want to talk,” she explained, holding her hands up. “I don’t want a fight.”

  “I’ll ask you one more time. Who the fuck are you?”

  “My name is Mei,” she replied, her gaze never dropping from mine. She was trained, that much was clear, but by whom?

  If she’d followed me, then she was on X’s trail, too. “Who do you work for?”

  “Intelligence.”

  I let the knife drop away from her skin, my eyes widening slightly before I reined myself in. Intelligence?

  “I just want to talk, Mercy.”

  Hissing, I raised the knife again, this time pressing it into her cheek a little harder. A droplet of red blood rose to the surface, bright against her flawless skin. “How do you know that name?”

  “Paris.”

  Paris? They were watching us.

  “I just want to talk,” she repeated, not even flinching at the knife in her face.

  “About?”

  “Let me go and I’ll show you.”

  I didn’t want to but curiosity and me…well, we never really got along. I was always the one who gave in when someone dangled a carrot. I wanted to know everything.

  I backed away slowly, letting the woman go and keeping the knife raised at the ready.

  Mei reached toward the inside of her coat and I hissed, her gaze flashing to mine.

  “I’m just reaching for a photograph. It’s in my inside pocket. I’m unarmed.”

  I nodded. “Do it slowly.”

  She dropped her gaze, slipped her hand inside her heavy coat and gently tugged a piece of paper from underneath the lapel. She held it out to me with long, slender fingers and I snatched it from her with a scowl.

  I glanced at it, then at her, then back at the photograph. All I saw was X and my blood ran cold. His carefully guarded identity had been leaked even further. He was no longer the ghost he claimed to be. Was that why he didn’t want to leave the cottage? Fuck, was it the real reason why he wanted to disappear?

  I was looking at a surveillance photo from Paris. I could tell because I remembered the cafe we sat at. The cafe across from Lafayette’s wine bar in St Germain.

  “What do you want?” I asked thinly, my grip tightening around the knife in my hand.

  “We’ve been looking for that man for a very long time,” she said, her voice confident and friendly, like she was trying to calm a wild animal. “All I want is a meeting.”

  I snorted. “A fucking meeting? Do you think I was born yesterday?” I looked her up and down in disbelief. The moment they set eyes on him, they’d take him into custody or worse…shoot him. Claim he tried something. There was no fucking way they just wanted to talk, not after the rap sheet X had clocked up in the last eight years. I’d never give him up.

  The woman turned it up a notch. “He wasn’t always like this.”

  My heart stilled and my breath caught. He wasn’t always like this.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I snarled.

  “Arrange a meeting, and you’ll get all the answers you want.” Her gaze didn't falter at all, which meant one thing. She was a pro, field rated with an excellent track record. She wasn’t fucking around.

  “If you want to contact me, you need to call.” She recited a number. The training X had drilled into me took hold and I memorized the digits despite myself.

  Dropping the knife into my pocket, I stepped back, distancing myself from her. She wasn’t going to kill me. She needed me to get to X. Staring into her eyes so she would get the message loud and clear, I tore the photo in half, and then proceeded to rip it into tiny little pieces. “In your fucking dreams.” I threw the remains of the photo at her, the pieces hitting her chest and fluttering to the ground.

  I began to walk away, my fingers hovering over the knife in my jacket pocket. I had no qualms whatsoever if I had to use it on the bitch. I already had blood on my hands, so what was one more life?

  But I wasn’t fully prepared for what she said next. “You’ll get a full pardon.”

  I stilled, then instantly felt guilty that I’d let anything tempt me to give up X, no matter how much we’d fought.

  “I don’t give a fuck about me,” I said, not turning.

  “Think about it.”

  Looking over my shoulder, I caught her gaze. “Never contact me again.”

  She nodded slightly, waiting. My threat was clear.

  Contact me again, and you’ll get a bullet in your head.

  X had trained me well…perhaps too well. He was mine, and I’d go through an entire army to protect him, no matter the shit we argued about.

  X was mine.

  Chapter 8

  X

  Mercy still wasn’t back by the time I finished with Weiss.

  The bastard had clammed up and wasn’t talking, but I wasn’t surprised. He was right about a lot of things. The moment Vaughn had captured him was the moment Royal Blood had cast him off. They weren’t coming to extract him from us. They weren’t anything. All they gave a shit about was altering their protocols and movements in the event that Weiss spilled his guts. Since he was the biggest coward I’d ever met, that was a given.

  In saying all of that, he’d surprised me with his unwillingness to talk. It was like he’d already given up. Dead man walking.

  I emerged into the distillery and found Vaughn and Hawkes in the back room. They’d set up a makeshift office of sorts. There was a desk, a sofa and a small bar fridge with an electric kettle sitting on top. A small portable heater was placed in the middle of the room, and the two men were huddled around it. It looked like the headquarters of a building site, not the hideout of a criminal intelligence mastermind with a penchant for hanging his victims up by their ankles.

  “Done?” Vaughn asked as I closed the door behind me.

  “For now.” I glanced around the room like Mercy would be hiding behind the sofa. Fat fucking chance.

  “She’ll come back,” Vaughn said, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you trust her?”

  I scowled. “It’s them I don’t trust.”

  “And so you shouldn’t. She’s a smart cookie,” he went on. “She obviously knows what she’s doing.” I opened my mouth to give him a piece of my mind, but he waved a hand at me. “I know, X. Hands off. Don’t fuck with her. I get it.”

  I snorted. “Good.”

  “Did you get anything out of him?” Vaughn asked, nodding toward the direction of the basement where Weiss was currently unconscious. My parting gift.

  “
Weiss gave me some intel,” I replied. “I want to check it out.”

  Vaughn nodded. “Go. I’ll wait around with Hawkes for Mercy. I’ll let you know when she comes back.”

  If she comes back, a voice inside my head echoed. Doubt, it was a fickle thing, and I’d never felt it before, but I felt a lot of new things these days.

  Hawkes stood, smoothing his jacket with his hands. “I’ll see you out.”

  I held my hand up. “No need.”

  Vaughn waved his mobile phone at me. “We’ll keep an eye out for her. Don't worry about it.”

  I left without another word, placing what little trust I had in The Hangman. I had no other way of contacting Mercy, and for once in my pathetic life, I wished I'd had the forethought to give her a burner phone like I had in Paris. I hadn’t counted on her running off. She and I were one and the same, and knowing she was someplace unknown, ate at me. It burned at the edges of my ruined heart, and if I didn’t shut it off, it would consume me.

  So, I turned to the one thing I knew. My training.

  Compartmentalizing my anguish, I shut it off and focused on the task at hand. Verifying Weiss’ intel.

  The address was in a block at the forefront of a new residential estate on the outskirts of Exeter. Posh, cookie-cutter looking houses with no distinguishing features from the next, other than the gardens and the cars parked along streets and driveways.

  I sat in my car two houses down and across the street from my mark and watched the house, still lost as to why Weiss had sent me here.

  It had to be a game, a distraction, or some pointless jibe to eat at my crumbling psyche because I was yet to see the significance.

  Half an hour passed. Nothing.

  Forty-five minutes and there was the flick of a light on the front stoop. The front door opened and a woman emerged from the house.

  From this distance it was hard to tell, but she looked to be Asian, her black hair cut to jaw or shoulder length. She wore a heavy black coat, a slate colored scarf around her neck and had a black leather handbag over one shoulder. She was tall, but slight, her movements suggesting she was athletic.