Nothing.
She heard the fridge door open, the clink of a milk bottle. Maybe it was Rosemary, after all.
She pulled an old, ill-fitting jumper from the hook on the back of her door and shrugged into it. It came halfway down her thighs. She stepped into the hallway and was considering calling Rosemary’s name when she smelt him. The soapy scent mixed with salty sweat.
‘You complete ass,’ she said out loud, stomping down the stairs, along the hallway towards the kitchen.
As she rounded the corner, she could make out a pair of clumpy boots and faded blue jeans, the knee ripped, standing at the open fridge, the rest of the body shielded by the bulk of the fridge door.
‘What the hell are you doing in my kitchen at twelve thirty at night?’
He stuck his head out from behind the fridge, a half slice of ham in his hand, the rest stuffed into his mouth.
He was dishevelled: his leather jacket had a long rip across the right sleeve and, from what little she could see of his T-shirt, he clearly didn’t own an iron.
He was staring at her.
‘What?’ she demanded, realizing that she should have put on some trousers.
‘You smell,’ he replied, matter of fact.
‘I do not! What the hell are you doing in my house?’ she repeated, indignant.
Taking his time, chewing the slice of meat, he replied, ‘I came for a visit.’
The sneer was almost imperceptible, but Kara saw it fleeting across his features.
It was all the reminder she needed to cement the word ‘danger’ into her brain. She crossed her arms over her chest and took a step back into the hallway.
‘A visit,’ she said, her voice steady. ‘You were only too happy to dump me in it a couple of hours ago. Like a dramatic exit, do you?’
‘We have to talk.’ He turned back to the fridge, shutting the door gently.
‘Ya, well, we’re not open for visitors. I think you should leave or I’ll call the police.’ Kara turned quickly and moved towards the hallway. She was in no mood for patronisation. He had the annoying habit of telling her what to do.
Jack followed.
‘Go ahead.’ The challenge was evident in his voice. ‘As if they would believe you. What exactly are you going to say to them? You’d be better off calling your boyfriend. Explain to him about your platelet issues.’
‘Excuse me?’ Kara turned, placing her hands firmly on her hips and glowered at him. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards slightly.
Kara got the distinct impression that he was laughing at her, but she kept her stance and maintained a cold hard stare.
‘I can smell him on your clothes – deodorant and drugs.’
Kara launched herself at him, her fist connecting with his face. She heard the crunch of bone and her knuckles burned. He grabbed her hands, so she kneed him in the groin with as much force as she could muster, pulling her hands free.
‘You little . . .’
‘What?’ she panted. ‘Afraid to hit a girl?’ She launched a swift kick to his thigh with the front part of her foot. Her body moved of its own accord, her muscles firing, responding in a visceral way. He tried to grab her, but she was too fast. She skidded away from him, her fists drawn up, ready to strike.
She wanted to fight, wanted to pummel his face, wipe his smirk off with a quick backhander, punch his stupid words into oblivion. Ben was the nicest guy she knew.
She recalled Ashleigh leaning towards him, her red lips inches away from his mouth.
She charged, her shoulder ducked, ready to catch Jack right in the chest, drive him out the front door if need be. But he moved at the last minute, catching her arm, twisting it till she was immobilised, a dart of pain buzzing through her body. The pain made her lose concentration, caused the floodgates to open, the heat and ice to wash over her, her blood boiling, rushing to that point of contact, the place where his hand restrained her.
She struggled, making the grip tighter, hurting her own body through her movement.
‘Calm down.’
She tried to stomp on his boots with her bare feet. He shook her, making the pain worse. ‘Quit it, will you!’
He pushed her away, her closeness equally uncomfortable for him. They stood, face to face, a few feet between them.
‘Do you want me to kill you?’ He asked the question so seriously, his eyes dark, watching her. She sat on the stairs, the energy leaving her body. What was wrong with her? He just made her so angry.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, running her fingers through her hair, giving her hands something to do. She was trying not to shake from pent-up anger and repressed fear. Why was he saying those things about Ben? Ben was the good guy. Jack was the one who was a total weirdo.
‘I came to talk to you,’ he reassured her, leaning against the wall, his hands held up, palms facing forward, as if surrendering.
Kara snorted in amusement. ‘Shall I put the kettle on for some tea and cucumber sandwiches while you tell me all about your plans to slit my wrists and drain my blood?’
He cringed before regaining his composure. ‘Sure. I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’ He walked slowly past her towards the kitchen.
‘I was being sarcastic, in case you didn’t realise,’ Kara muttered as she followed him.
Irritatingly, he was right. The urge to fight had suddenly evaporated, leaving her weary. Maybe they should talk, instead of trying to kill one another.
She flicked on the kettle.
As she waited for it to boil, she moved slowly, keeping him in her line of sight at all times. Retrieving mugs from the cupboard, she dropped two teabags into them.
‘You don’t have any biscuits?’ he enquired, watching her from under his heavy black lashes.
She tutted to herself, made her way to the cupboard above the cooker and reached for a packet of biscuits, the cheapest crappiest ones she could find.
‘Something decent.’ His words stopped her mid-reach, and she shot him a baleful glance over her shoulder.
‘Fine,’ she muttered.
She flung an unopened packet of chocolate digestives at him, harder than was strictly necessary.
He caught it with catlike reflexes. She smirked, filling the cups with water. She poured milk into both, not bothering to ask him how he took his. He could drink it as it was or go to hell. She banged the cup of scalding liquid down on the table in front of him. It churned in the cup and a healthy dribble spilled out over the rim.
‘Thank you.’ He attempted to smile at her, but it looked more like a grimace.
Kara sat opposite him and waited.
Whatever it was he wanted, he was hardly going to kill her here in the kitchen, at least not before having a biscuit, thought Kara ruefully to herself.
The silence grew so oppressive that she could feel beads of sweat trickling down her back in between her shoulder blades. Scenarios began to churn through her head, each more ridiculous than the last. Her belly was knotted several times over and still she waited.
Eventually, he spoke. ‘How did you find out my name?’
His first question wasn’t what she expected.
His knuckles round the mug of tea had turned white. She suspected he was restraining himself from crushing it into minute particles of dust. She stared him down, or attempted to, at least. She couldn’t quite figure out what it was about his eyes; they were dead, but every now and then she caught a spark of something.
‘The newspaper,’ she said with a sigh, deciding to tell him. ‘We looked you up in the newspaper.’
‘We?’
‘Yes, we. Hannah and I.’
He frowned a little. ‘The Watcher?’
‘Why do you call her that?’
He looked blankly back at her. ‘It’s not important right now. Continue with your story.’
His condescension was getting old. She clamped her mouth shut tightly and stared back at him. A cold, steely resolve settled within her and her back straightened. She folded her
hands on the table.
An eye for an eye, isn’t that what they say? she thought to herself, so they could have a mutual sharing-of-information session right here and right now.
He blinked once and the side of his mouth twitched up. She thought maybe, horror of horrors, that he would smile, but he didn’t.
He took a long drink of tea, eyeing her over the rim of his mug. When he was finished, he began.
‘She’s a Watcher because she sees things.’
‘Like what?’ Kara asked, eager for every detail.
‘If you insist on interrupting me, I won’t be able to tell you the information you require.’ The corner of his mouth twitched again and Kara knew he was mocking her. She settled back in her seat, determined to be silent.
‘She watches for the break in your concentration, for when you’re in between two states, in between decisions. When she sees the gap, she can change the outcome.’ He continued slowly, ‘She’s dangerous.’
Kara snorted loudly.
‘Ya, right. Hannah is no more dangerous than I am.’
He leaned forward at the table and eyed her with a seriousness that belied his years. ‘You are more dangerous than you think, little girl.’
She squinted at him and leaned across the table herself. ‘Call me a little girl again and I’ll throw you into next week.’
He smiled, this time for real, a slow smile that crinkled the corners of his mouth and reached all the way to his eyes for once.
Kara’s heart stopped beating for a fraction of a second.
She squirmed in her seat and said the first thing that came into her mind to distract herself. ‘When they found you in the alleyway . . . ’
His smile vanished instantly, the question hanging in the air between them.
‘I’m not here to talk about that.’
‘But . . .’
He shot her a menacing look. There was no way she could misinterpret him. The alleyway discussion was off limits. She would have to bide her time, worm the information out of him slowly.
‘You’re not here to suck my blood, then?’
‘No,’ he said quietly, caressing the side of the mug of lukewarm tea. ‘If only it were that simple. But, as you so successfully demonstrated outside The Loft, it looks like what was once mine is now happily rehomed.’
He settled back in the chair and looked at her with an unreadable expression.
‘What do you mean?’ Her brow creased.
‘Well, your little stunt tonight at The Loft proves that the link I feel with my own blood is reversible or capable of being overridden. You can control it now.’
She considered his words carefully. Could she control the pulsating flow of blood that rushed through her veins, screaming at times to get out, to get back to its original owner?
Yes, she thought to herself, she could. That’s what it was, the strength pulsing through her, the heightened senses and, she supposed, her tendency to get a bit cranky now and then. She was taking in and taking on some of the characteristics of her donor. She was connected to him and it was inescapable, no matter how much she tried to deny it.
‘What are you?’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. He stopped mid gulp.
His voice was soft when he eventually spoke. ‘I am a . . . disease.’
Kara gripped the edge of her chair, controlling fiercely her urge to run, to run out of the room, down the corridor and out of the house. She didn’t really want to hear what he was, didn’t really want to know what made his eyes appear cold and dead because she knew that, whatever he was, she was part of it too.
He did not notice her reaction as he was staring off into the middle distance.
‘I was . . . infected, you could say, with blood from a bad donor and it had side effects.’
‘A bad donor? Were you in an accident . . . the alleyway . . . ’
He ignored the last comment. ‘It was at my house.’
He closed his eyes for a moment and Kara thought he might have gone to sleep, he kept himself so still. When he opened them again they were hard and dark, almost black.
She drew back from the table. She could see his knuckles were white, gripping the edge of it. Her mouth went dry, her tongue feeling too large. She needed something cold to stem the pressure of fear that pushed against her. She knew he was about to say something terrible.
‘My parents, they were making dinner. I came downstairs. The man, the thing, he killed them, gluttoned himself on their blood. By the time he got to me he was almost full, had no room left . . . something interrupted him and he never got to finish the job.’ He swallowed, shaking his head. ‘I was taken to the hospital. A coma. I should have died but I didn’t. When I woke up, I had these new . . . skills.’
Kara looked at him for a moment, thinking. ‘But that was over two years ago.’
He nodded.
‘But my accident . . .’
‘That was the second time I went to sleep.’
‘Sleep?’ Kara asked, sceptical.
‘Yes.’ He looked away, ‘Something happened. I couldn’t control it. I wasn’t strong enough to withstand . . .’ His voice trailed away and Kara couldn’t stand the silence.
‘Ya, well, Mr Good Samaritan, I didn’t exactly sign up for getting some freaky mutant blood that has a mind of its own. It’s worse than fighting a custody battle: one minute it wants to go back to its original owner the next minute it is happy festering away in my little ol’ veins!’
Kara rocked back in her seat and sulkily looked out of the window. ‘It’s not like I ever asked for any of this,’ she said.
He smirked at her.
‘What?’ she barked, more fiercely than intended.
She really would have to learn to control her temper more around him, but it was as if he was an annoying itch that just wouldn’t go away and when you least expected he would flare up and irritate the hell out of you.
‘Nothing.’
They both looked out of the window into the night.
‘So do you know who attacked you? Your parents?’
He stared out of the window, the profile of his face in shadow. ‘I’ve been searching for him for a while. There’s this connection between us, that’s what I need to talk to you about. This man, this thing, he is dangerous, more dangerous . . .’
The shrill ring of her mobile phone made her jump.
‘Just a sec.’ She jogged through to the hall, rooting for the phone in the bottom of her bag.
Ben. ‘Crap.’ Walking on through to the front room she stood at the window, her back to the door. For some reason she didn’t want Jack to hear.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi.’ Ben’s voice sounded tired. ‘Sorry for calling so late. I wanted to . . . Look tonight with Ashleigh. I don’t know what she’s playing at, but it’s not what you think.’
‘OK.’ Kara really couldn’t have this conversation right now. She heard the floorboards creak in the hallway. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Jack standing there.
He’d followed her, why had he done that?
She didn’t like having her back to him. She half turned, saw him come into the sitting room and stand by the fireplace. She wanted to hang up, but Ben was saying something.
Coolly she cut him off, ‘I’m sorry. It’s really late. I can’t talk right now.’ The tone of her voice made her sound as if she was angry.
‘Can I see you tomorrow. Meet me at Easy Espresso?’
‘OK. I’ll call you.’ And she pressed the red button. She could only deal with one problem at a time. Ben would have to wait.
She turned round. Jack was standing at the mantelpiece, looking at their family pictures.
He had a picture of her dad in his hand. It was her favourite photograph, taken the day he was made senior fire officer at the station. They’d all gone down to a ceremony at City Hall, dressed up in their finery. Kara had only been six at the time, but she remembered it well, the excitement of the day, Rosemary fussing with
her dress, curling her hair in real grown-up curlers. The sun had been shining and afterwards, when all the big men had shaken her daddy’s hand and pinched her cheeks till they were sore, the three of them had gone to the park and eaten ice cream.
She didn’t like it that Jack was touching that picture.
‘Who is this?’ he asked, his voice ice cold, his gazed fixed firmly on the photograph.
‘That’s my father.’ She said the words quietly, listening to the unfamiliar sound that rolled off her tongue.
In slow motion the frame slipped from his fingers, and smashed to the ground, the crunch of glass echoing through the room. Kara knew she should have lunged forward for the picture frame, she probably would have made it, saving the expensive crystal and her father’s image from the floor. But she hadn’t been able to move. The look on Jack’s face had glued her to the spot.
The room was silent.
She began to absently count the shards of glass scattered on the floor, distracting herself from the stabbing pain she felt in her chest. She didn’t need to look at him to know that something was terribly wrong. Waves of heat peeled off his body. She began to tremble and knew it was because he was shaking uncontrollably and her body matched his response.
‘What have you done?’ she whispered.
He shook his head and bent down, mumbling apologies as he began to pick up the pieces of broken glass, gently shaking out the photograph from the wreckage of the destroyed frame.
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him, his eyes, cold and dead, a light sheen of perspiration plastered across his forehead.
He would not look at her and she realised that he was vulnerable, lower than her, kneeling in front of her. She felt off balance. She knelt down beside him and started to pick up the shards. A sliver of glass, razor sharp, slipped from her fumbling grip and cut into the flesh of her finger. ‘Ouch.’
She didn’t need to wait very long for the blood to congeal on the tip of her finger and push itself in the general direction of Jack. She stood up, gripping her bleeding finger closed in her fist. Nothing was ever truly hers, not her father, her friends, and now even her blood.
Blood Entwines Page 17
