Daemons of London Boxset (Books 1-3) The Bleeders, The Human Herders, The Purebloods

by Michaela Haze

  “Parr and Maylett,” he repeated their names to himself, “you know what you’re asking of me, I am just making sure the prerequisites of our deal are straightened out.”

  I noticed the tape recorder again, it was hidden behind a rather lonely potted plant on his polished desk in the corner.

  “I, Sophia Daisy Taylor, am hiring you to kill the men who murdered my sister.” I croaked. “There... A statement, is that enough for the record?” It came out harsher than I intended.

  A tiny smile hitched at the corner of his lips and as quickly as it appeared his smile was lost and he stared back as if he was in pain. His expressions changed so suddenly it was painful to watch. I filled my lungs with air, a welcome sense of relief washed over me.

  Henry leant forward and knitted his fingers together.

  “I shall take four weeks, maximum, to complete this,” Henry warned.

  “I would like some warning when you—”

  Henry smiled sadly, “of course.”

  “Five thousand when it’s done,” Henry said, reminding me of the dent in my sister’s inheritance.

  “Thank you,” I murmured as I shuffled in my seat.

  I barely held myself together as I blinked tearfully. I would get what I wanted but my soul compromised for this. I knew that but I had to. I had to get them for what they did.

  I didn’t want to live like this anymore. I wanted closure, proof that evil people in the world did not deserve to live in it. I rubbed my arms as if to keep warm, they itched from my newly formed scabs. Henry’s expression was curious.

  “No need to thank me,” he said. His eyes had darkened and he dropped his gaze to my arms. His words had no inflection as if he did not deserve thanks in any capacity.

  I winced as I felt one of the cuts on my arm open from the slight friction. That was my reward for my nervous fiddling. I sucked in a mouthful of air as my arm started to sting and burn from the open wound.

  “Get. Out,” Henry barked through clenched teeth.

  I stood up, pain pierced through my arm. I felt a dampness wash over my skin, it was blood.

  “What—” I started to say but stopped. His teeth were gritted and his eyes alive with anger.

  I could feel the damp under the sleeve my black t-shirt from my newly opened wound.

  “Get OUT!” He screamed. His voice rose so rapidly the glass on the windows rattled and threatened to break. I took a step back and dodged his furniture. I flew to the door and slammed it behind me. My breath came hard and fast.

  I did not understand. He looked so forlorn and then he had switched, it was like he was two different people. When those dark blue eyes looked back at me they were different from the eyes I first met. They were the eyes of a man that killed people.

  For the first time since I had met him, I felt frightened.

  He said he would kill them but I didn’t feel the warm and fuzzy reprieve I expected. For ten thousand pounds, I was becoming a murderer. I had to trust a man with vicious mood swings. A hitman. The best in the business. He was going to kill the bastards that took my sister.

  As I ran down the street in the London drizzle, my wounds ached.

  3.

  I was always the taller one, the gangly teen who wore converse and rushed off to boy’s houses in the middle of the night. I had my nose pierced but the hole had healed and squeezed shut long ago. Melanie was always the scholar who loved animals and always smiled. People used to call Mel a natural ray of light. Bouncy and full of life.

  Parr was in the supermarket when she first saw him. Mel was twenty and already into her second year of an English Literature degree at Oxford. I remembered how Melanie’s hand grasped tightly around my own, her dusty violet eyes were wide. She looked like she had seen a ghost.

  “Mel, are you alright?” I asked.

  Mel shook her head and turned back to the man. He had short cropped blonde hair and eyes like headlights. A man I would later find out to be a devil incarcerate. A psychopath: Robert Parr.

  He looked over at Mel then looked down. Mel blushed looking at her feet as well.

  “Oh god,” she groaned, a little smile lit up her red face.

  “What?” I wondered.

  “I think I just found my soul mate,” she whispered.

  Who even says that anymore? I wondered. I furrowed my brow and turned back to the shelf. I couldn’t help but think that destiny had a funny way of working if two soul mates would meet in the alcohol section of Tesco’s.

  My legs pulled to my chest as I stared at the blank television. My skin had turned pink against the cold bottle of vodka wedged between my thighs. I nursed it like the child that Melanie would never be able to bring to this world. Mel finally left him, for the sake of her unborn child but everyone knew that story did not end well.

  “You’re doing this for Melanie,” I muttered, “You’ve tried everything else.” My eyes brimmed with tears; I looked down to the angry crimson lines, my scars. They grimaced back at me like crooked smiles. “You’ve tried everything else,” I whimpered.

  Robert Parr took my sister and dragged her down. There was no spark in Mel’s eyes in those last months. He pumped himself full of the drugs he sold, while Mel went to work. She wasn’t allowed to see anyone but was on the receiving end of his fists. It should have been me. I was the sinner. I was the girl with piercings, who smoked too many fags and didn’t care about life. It should have been me.

  Why did Melanie, who deserved so much more, have to die? It should have been me. I would give my life for Melanie’s but now that wasn’t an option. There was no life to trade anymore.

  After flicking through the channels, I decided there was nothing of interest. I turned off the TV and rolled over. I got the feeling someone was watching me again. I scrunched my eyes shut and tried to ignore it as it crept up my spine.

  Instead of being sinister it made me feel safe and I fell asleep.

  I woke up screaming again. I’d seen her in my nightmares. My bed sheets were soaked in sweat, my head pounded. It was too much. I couldn’t gain any purchase on myself. My phone started ringing, annoying and shrill.

  The screen told me it was my mother.

  “Hello.” I deadpanned into the receiver.

  “Sophia, is that you?” her nasally voice rang through my ears. No, it’s my mobile phone and you’ve reached Mother Theresa, congratulations.

  “Yes mother, it’s me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d answer,” my mother sighed.

  “Well, I have,” I said curtly.

  “I’m coming over for the Christmas holidays, I’m bringing,” insert Asshole step dad’s name here, “I need to know when you’re off for the holidays—”

  “Don’t bother fucking coming,” I muttered and pressed the end button.

  I threw my phone to the other end of the room, it landed screen up but didn’t crack. I hadn’t realised how scratchy my voice was, it was like I had swallowed iron shavings.

  I shivered and bit my lip. My chest ached and I couldn’t get away from the self-pity that I had grown accustomed to. To pity myself and wish my life was different was like breathing to me.

  There was a black duffle bag under my bed with five thousand pounds in fifties, the rest of my savings account and the price for the heads of the two men that ruined my sister.

  I thought of how Henry Blaire had screamed, I shook my head and cursed to myself. I shouldn’t want to be close to him but he should at least have the common curtsey, as one human to another, to not shout at me and scream for me to leave without reason. Especially since the parting of money and the promise of murder was an unusually intimate promise.

  I refused to believe that he would go back on his word to take my case. He had technically not said anything to imply such, other than “get out”.

  I turned my exposed flesh over and looked at my self-harm cuts; the scabs had darkened and formed a crusty layer over each angry line. I thought about getting a bandage but decided against it. There
was the danger of infection, not that I cared.

  I was going to hell, but at least I had a destination.

  Thou shalt not kill.

  I was doing just that—but my weapon was someone else’s hands.

  I heard a wolf whistle behind me as I wiped down the sticky wood that generally came along with £1 shot Tuesday. I knocked the leftover salt to the floor so that I could sweep it up later. At least I agreed with the cause, tequila needed salt and lemon, even if the result was a mess.

  I turned around to see that Chris sat on the bar, swinging his legs like a lazy child.

  “Your shift ended two hours ago. Go home Chris.” I hissed.

  Tsk. You get worse every day.”

  I was on edge as I failed to hold myself together in public, I was at work but my mind wasn’t. My mind was far away, the words 'Get out' played over and over.

  I wanted to run into the toilets and curl up into a ball on the dirty floor.

  Do something useful and clean the girl’s toilets,” I commanded. An hour until the bar opened, an hour of nothing to occupy my thoughts.

  “Clean the toilets?” Chris asked as he wrinkled his nose.

  “Do it and I’ll give you a cigarette.” His face lit up and he darted off.

  I was alone for a few seconds before my knees buckled and I started to shake. I shouldn’t have come into work. Fatigue followed wherever I went. I let out a raspy breath, a desperate sigh. I lifted my eyes from the wood and suddenly they were met with deep blue orbs that bored into me from across the room. A figure in the corner of the bar. I jumped and screamed, as I flew at least two feet in the air and bouncing back.

  “Are you alright in there, Sophia?!” Chris’s voice called from the girl’s toilets.

  I looked over at Henry Blaire in the corner of Bar Noir hidden in the shadows.

  “I’m fine Chris!” I shouted back. I took big breaths to regulate my heart beat.

  Henry looked tired but still pale and beautiful. His eyes were glassy as he ran his fingers through his messy mahogany hair and took a casual step forward.

  “What are you doing here?” I breathed.

  Henry blinked as if he was lost. I could see his lean and leonine body as he walked gracefully to the bar. If his face weren't drawn in contempt I would have sworn that he was seducing me. He slammed his palm onto the bar. A little plastic stick rested where his hand was a second before.

  “I brought you something,” he said.

  “What is it?” I asked in a strangled voice that didn’t sound like me at all.

  Henry looked like he wanted to be anywhere else but here.

  “The audio files you requested are on that USB.” he informed me, “they are the recordings of our interactions together.” The way he said ‘recordings” made it sound like we had been making pornography together. I blushed and Henry shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  “Why?” I asked gently, my voice shaking.

  Henry crooked a perfectly arched eyebrow. “You asked for them.”

  I shook my head. “No. Why did you tell me to get out? Does that mean that you’re not taking my case anymore?” I looked down to my hands and twisted them as if they weren’t my own anymore.

  “I said that I would take your case” He was nervous just as I was. It was like electricity corrupted the air around us, suffocating us both. Henry Blaire let out a small pained laugh.

  “You need to be careful who you bleed around,” he said lightly. I realised that my hand had been rubbing absently over my wounds on my arms even though they were hidden in long sleeves.

  I opened my mouth to speak but Henry only turned and began to walk away.

  “I still plan to do as I agreed.” He said. “I shall expect the remainder of my payment when the job is done, via wire transfer. Instructions on how to do so are on the USB.”

  I nodded wordlessly; we were so close that he spoke in barely a whisper. The golden crucifix around his neck glinted in the dim light.

  “Is this the last time I will see you?” I asked and instantly wished I had stayed silent.

  Henry whipped his head to the left a second before Chris emerged with a large water stain down the front of his white t-shirt. Chris rubbed the back of his head absently and stumbled out, whining something about the taps not working. Henry abruptly took a step back, as if he was a child being caught doing something he shouldn’t.

  Oh, god, I thought, I clutched the fabric of my long sleeved t-shirt over where my heart should be. Something inside me had shifted. Over the layer of heartache was something else, something heavier. A grating and a niggling feeling in my chest.

  Was I attracted to this man?

  He certainly did look good if impossible to determine his age. Milky skin with an under layer of translucency and hair that looked like he’d just been fucked.

  He was a murderer.

  So are you.

  “Hello,” Henry murmured. Chris blinked a few times and extended his hand to Henry when he was close enough. He did not take it.

  “I’ve met you before, right?” Chris Archer asked. “You’re Andrew Eaton?”

  I looked at Henry thoroughly confused. The hit man smiled wryly to himself as if enjoying a private joke.

  “Mr. Archer, I believe. I haven’t seen your father in so long,” Henry spoke softly but the meaning behind them was sinister.

  Henry looked down at Chris’s extended hand and Chris retracted it quickly.

  “Andrew was just leaving,” I said.

  “Oh yes,” Henry smiled pleasantly, my insides turned from a writhing pit of snakes into something fiery and charred. “I must be going. I will be seeing you, Sophia.” He smirked cockily and turned around walking calmly to the door.

  “You look like you’re about to shit your britches,” I said as I saw Henry’s retreating form through the glass doors.

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Chris hedged.

  I shrugged and started wiping down the bar again.

  “You shouldn’t talk to Eaton. There’s something wrong with that man…” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know Sophia…but I don’t like it. He’s fucking scary is what he is. You shouldn’t be around people like that.” Chris insisted.

  “I’ve been around people like that my whole life,” I replied coolly.

  “Yeah, but you’re not that Sophia anymore…”

  I slammed both of my hands on the counter with an audible bang. “What the hell Chris?!” I yelled and my violet eyes narrowed as I stared him down.

  “I didn’t mean that.” he sighed.

  “What did you mean? I am who I am. I’m the same girl I have always been.”

  Chris’s hands flew up in exasperation. “Praise the Lord, Miss Emotionally Dead finally reveals some emotion,” he bit back.

  I growled back at him incredulously, “I never changed. I’m still the same person I always was.” My eyes were downcast.

  “Right—do you mean by the amount you drink or smoke?” Chris snorted. “You drink a load more than you used to…”

  “You’re judging me? You smoke as much as I do. Nicotine is addictive Chris.”

  Chris looked down at the floor uncomfortably. “I only smoke that much because it’s the only time you’ll actually talk to me.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to speak.

  “You’re not there anymore Fia. Your eyes are empty, like everything in the world has been taken and you don’t want to live anymore.”

  “Are asking if I’m suicidal?” My face flushed with anger.

  “No.” He swallowed. “You’d never do that.”

  I turned around and checked the clock; I still had forty-five minutes before the bar opened.

  “You don’t want me to hang around with Hen—I mean Andrew Eaton, right?” I asked him in my most conceding tone.

  “He’s not good for you. He’s into some bad stuff,” Chris said.

  “Are you sure t
his isn’t some territorial male bullshit?”

  “Certain.” He sighed.

  I smirked, “I will no longer hang out with Andrew Eaton. I will disassociate myself with that man.” But you never said anything about Henry Blaire.

  “I’m sorry.” Chris visibly relaxed. “I don’t want to see you do something stupid.”

  “What, like killing myself?” I asked gently.

  “Sorry that I implied—” he started.

  I just shook my head and let out a bitter laugh. “It’s fine, don’t worry,” I pointed to my face. “I’ve seen what I look like. I’m not exactly the poster child for ideal mental health or shiny hair.”

  “At least you seem to be eating more recently.” Chris allowed. I smiled half-heartedly. Life had been easier since Henry.

  “Are you going to give me a fag or not?” Chris asked impatiently.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled one out of the packet throwing it to him. “Lighter?” I asked. He nodded.

  “Are you coming?” Chris asked as I threw my little red lighter at him.

  I shook my head and gestured to the clock.

  “I’m just going to check if the toilets need doing again…” I rolled my eyes.

  Chris put his hand over his heart and acted as if he had been wounded. He turned around and hopped down the ledge, sparking up. As he stood in the beer garden out of the back of the bar, puffing away, I was jealous. He wasn’t broken. Or if he was he was better at hiding it than me. I was never a good actress.

  Kill myself? Chris thought I was going to kill myself?

  “You can’t kill what’s already dead,” I muttered under my breath. And the feeling that someone was watching me suddenly intensified and filled me with great sadness.

  At the end of my shift when Gina closed the doors, I watched as the floors were cleaned and tables wiped. I wondered why nights were so much more challenging. Why couldn’t I sleep like a normal person without nightmares and screams? Reluctant to go home, I pulled out a bottle of Whisky from behind the bar. Gina, my supervisor watched me and with raised eyebrows.