by E. L Friel
MOST WANTED
(The first novel in the Shadow Blade Series)
Copyright © 2013 E.L Friel
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of E.L Friel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
MOST WANTED
The first book in the Shadow Blade Series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Chapter 1
There were dives and then there was The Spithound, which was the kind of place that made your average dive seem like a penthouse suite at The Beverly Wilshire. Ariel sighed and pushed open the door, feeling the comforting pressure of her knife hilt pressing against her anklebone, and smiled when she saw the idiot with the ten thousand dollar bounty on his head sitting at the bar getting drunk. This would be like stealing candy from a baby.
The stench of stale beer, cigarettes and unwashed bodies almost made her eyes weep. As it was she had to cover her mouth when she walked inside. It was loud, some truly hellacious punk metal band torturing their instruments on the makeshift stage in the corner. The girl singer had long blonde hair hanging in tatty ribbons to her waist and skin as pale as a Sucker’s. The sweat beading her brow confirmed though that she wasn’t a Sucker.
But Ariel’s Spidey-senses were tingling. Someone in the place was definitely not human. She scanned the dingy bar. It was busy. There were a dozen bikers – no surprise given the bar’s location next to a truck stop, a couple of shifty-looking guys with questionable facial hair hanging out by the bathrooms who Ariel figured were either pimps or dealers or possibly just hipsters, and a handful of starved looking girls who were probably looking to turn a few tricks and earn enough for their next fix. Over in the corner, sitting in a booth nursing beers, were two guys wearing trucker caps pulled low, shading their faces. They were all disappointingly human though.
Frowning, Ariel turned to the dance floor and finally spied them - three Suckers head-banging along to the band, no doubt eyeing up dinner in the form of the greasy-looking drummer in the Clash T-shirt. She imagined they’d go for him over the singer with the ratty blonde hair. There was barely enough meat on her bones to make it worthwhile. Ariel watched the three Suckers for a moment, transfixed by the way their white skin gleamed like polished marble under the reddish lights, and by their slightly amped up movements. She ran through a few scenarios whereby all three of them ended up headless decorating the bar but then decided that a little random slaughter and mayhem wasn’t what she was there for. She had to focus on her hit. She needed the ten thousand dollars more than she needed to partake in a random massacre.
It was too crowded in the bar. There were too many witnesses to cause a scene. Despite the fact they were in the human realm and despite the fact True Blood and Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer should have taught people something (though admittedly nothing that useful – Suckers didn’t sparkle, werewolves didn’t exist, and humans who killed demons weren’t called Slayers, they were called Blades), most humans were oblivious to the fact that demons walked among them.
Ariel scanned the bar again. Where the hell was he?
She had good intel that he was there. It was a known Sucker hang out. Among all the pimps and meth-heads they didn’t stand out so much and the food pickings were rich. Suckers were mainly bottom feeders, the catfish of the demon world. Ariel liked to think of herself as a Great White come to rebalance the eco-system.
She finally spied Ezekiel sitting on a stool at the end of the bar. She shook her head, feeling almost disappointed at how easy it was going to be. He was sitting hunched over, a beer in his hands. A row of empty shot glasses was lined up in front of him. Ariel’s heart rate quickened and she felt a rush of adrenaline flood through her veins. It had been a while since she’d had a hit and she had to caution herself to slow down, take her time, and not rush in.
Jax’s attention was immediately captured by the girl who had just walked into the bar. She was about five eleven, though two inches of that was heels, with long dark hair, luminous green eyes that scanned the place like a hawk eyeing a field of mice, and curves that begged to be mapped by hand. What was she doing in this shithole of a place? She didn’t look like a working girl, and was far too attractive to be a meth-head or a demon.
‘Jax!’ Cy snapped his fingers in front of his face. ‘Focus.’
Jax tore his eyes off the girl who was still standing in the doorway and fixed his attention back on Cy, though his awareness remained firmly on the girl. There was a crew of bearded, heavily tattooed bikers over in one corner who had also noticed her. Beneath the table he flexed his thigh, feeling the blade rubbing along the inside of his boot.
‘There’s a group of them on your patch.’
Jax frowned at Cy.
‘You want help sorting it out?’ Cy asked, swigging from his beer, grinning at Jax as he did.
‘No,’ Jax answered, distracted by the scent of the girl as she passed by the table. He sniffed. She wasn’t wearing perfume but her scent was strong. Intoxicating would be stretching it, but it was something close. ‘I got it,’ he said. Cy always liked a fight but he had enough trouble in his own sector. And Jax had never needed help before. It was a point of pride.
Cy was glancing now over Jax’s shoulder. ‘Looks like trouble,’ he murmured, his hand moving under the table, to his boot, where Jax knew he also kept a blade.
Jax turned around and saw the girl was now standing with a hand on one hip, facing off against one of the bikers.
Halfway between Ezekiel and the door a man cut in front of Ariel, blocking her way. He was about her height, but with a belly that made him look ten months pregnant with triplets and a beard that probably housed a family of rodents. He was staring at her chest as though he’d never seen boobs before.
‘You know,’ Ariel said to him with a seductive smile, ‘if you want to look at a pair of breasts why not just stand naked in front of the mirror?’
His mouth dropped open and his eyes flew finally to her face. She rested a hand on one hip and watched his expression transform into a snarl of fury.
‘You b–’ he began.
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. Ariel moved so fast he didn’t even see her hand come up, but he did feel it slice like a blunt machete into his neck. Brute force trauma to the vagus nerve. One of her favorite moves. The guy blacked out straight away, tumbling to his knees and smacking his head on the edge of a table. Brute force trauma to the skull. Shame. Ariel stepped over him.
‘Some men can’t handle their liquor,�
�� she said, flashing a smile at the group of bikers who’d turned in alarm to stare at their fallen comrade. One rushed to help him, the others just watched bewildered as Ariel passed by.
Cy and Jax were instantly on their feet, but before either could make a move, the girl had done something and laid the fat, leather-clad bastard out. He collapsed to the ground, almost knocking over a table.
The girl stepped over him as though stepping around a cockroach and headed on to the bar.
‘I don’t think that’s a girl that needs rescuing,’ Cy said, sitting back down, grinning.
Jax watched her as she pulled up a seat next to a skeevy-looking Sucker. What the hell was she doing? Cy was still laughing. ‘Maybe she’s a Sucker lover,’ he muttered.
Jax scowled, his gaze sweeping the bar. There was a bunch of Suckers over on the dance floor too, eyeing up the band like it was feeding time at the zoo. Why’d a girl like that choose a bar like this? Even if it weren’t crawling with demons there were the leery, drunk bikers and strung-out pimps to contend with. ‘Damn city’s getting overrun,’ he muttered under his breath.
‘Well, you handle your sector and I’ll handle mine,’ Cy answered. ‘All we can do is try to stay on top if it.’
Jax took another swig of his beer, contemplating Cy’s words. The city of LA was divided into twelve sectors, each one policed by a single Blade. There were too many demons and not enough Blades though, so the Blades focused instead on keeping order, killing only the demons that were causing the most trouble. In a way, all the Blades had become was a form of pest control. The rats and cockroaches weren’t going anywhere. No matter how many they killed, how many times they exterminated a nest, within a few weeks they were back, in even greater numbers.
‘Why’d you want to meet here?’ Jax asked, watching one of the dealers palm a twenty-dollar bill and slip a wrap of something to one of the girls working the place. The bar was on the periphery of Cy’s sector and they’d never met there before.
‘I’m meeting Willa here, later,’ Cy said, tossing some peanuts into his mouth.
Willa was another Blade, new to LA. Cy had been training her for the last six months but Jax was in no doubt that Cy’s version of training involved a lot of horizontal workouts.
‘We’re going to do a little clean up,' Cy said now, smiling deviously, his eyes twinkling, giving Jax an idea of just how he managed to convince so many women to climb into his bed. He jerked his chin towards the dance floor. ‘Just a little containment.’
Jax nodded absently, his foot tapping beneath the table. Truth was he was finding it hard to concentrate knowing that girl was still sitting behind him at the bar next to that skinny little Sucker. He glanced once more over his shoulder and saw she’d struck up a conversation with him, but over the caterwauling of the singer on stage Jax couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Cy pulled his buzzing phone from his pocket just then and checked his messages. Shoving it back in his pocket he stood up grinning. ‘I gotta go. Willa wants to meet at her place.’ He downed his beer in one and tossed another handful of peanuts into his mouth.
Jax shook his head. Cy treated women like they were M&Ms and the factory was going out of business. He wouldn’t ever say anything but in his opinion it was never a good idea to get involved with another Blade. You might never know when you needed to ask them a favor. And it was never wise to screw with someone who killed for a living. The break up could get messy. He’d seen it happen.
‘Stay out of trouble,’ Cy said, grabbing a last handful of nuts and tearing out the bar.
A part of Jax envied him the freedom Cy had, the way he picked up women, the intimacy he shared with them, however fleeting. He nursed his beer, trying to stop his thoughts from wandering to Neve. He eyed the Suckers on the dance floor from under the rim of his cap and tried to formulate a plan.
He guessed he would wait until the bar closed up and get them when they walked out, but then again there was that group of Suckers Cy wanted him to investigate. He’d heard they were hanging around under Venice pier causing trouble. There were a lot of them, around twenty according to Cy, which was unusual. Suckers never usually formed such big nests. They were usually loners, he guessed because they weren’t known for their scintillating conversation or for their loyalty.
Still, despite the fact he knew he should go and investigate, something kept Jax glued to his seat. It wasn’t the music that was for sure. It wasn’t the Suckers on the dance floor either. As he sipped his beer, Jax’s attention was solely focused on the girl behind him. Like a vibration buzzing through his body he could feel her. Even without looking he could sense her movements, could picture the way she was leaning over the bar, could pick up the strange rhythm of her heartbeat. It was as if from the moment she’d walked into the bar someone had wound a thin silver filament around his sternum and that this girl – this stranger – had a hold of the end and kept on tugging.
Ezekiel was about thirty-five, but in Sucker years he was probably eighty. He was skinny, rat-faced, with sunken eyes, and looked like he’d been feeding off meth-heads for the last decade. He turned towards Ariel slowly and did a comedy double take, almost falling off his stool. Ariel rested her elbows on the bar, giving her push-up bra a little help. God, she hated wearing these things, and make up too, but it sure made things easier. Sometimes she thought her breasts were her best weapon. So long as her victim’s focus was on her chest they never noticed the knife coming. When she saw Ezekiel’s eyes dilate and his tongue flick out to lick his lips, her fingers itched to draw her knife. But, she told herself somewhat reluctantly, she wasn’t there to kill Ezekiel, just to kidnap him.
‘Buy a girl a drink?’ she purred.
Ezekiel’s beady eyes stayed fixated on her cleavage. She was going to need to take a shower after this. He was clearly drunk, swaying like a broken stemmed flower on his seat.
‘I would,’ he said, giving Ariel a smile that she imagined he thought was charming but which made him look even more like a drunken serial killer. ‘But I’m all out of money.’
Ariel pouted. ‘Well, that’s a shame,’ she said, leaning in closer and suppressing the gag reflex.
The Brothers had issued the warrant for Ezekiel’s arrest two days ago but unlike most warrants there had been no information on the crime he’d committed. Ariel was assuming, being the low-life Sucker he was, it probably involved something to do with killing another Sucker or stealing, or another low level crime.
Oh, whatever. It wasn’t important what he’d done, just that she capture him, take him to the Brothers and get her bounty. Flicking her eyes across the bar, Ariel saw that the guy she’d knocked out was now sitting on a chair with his head between his knees, rubbing at his neck. She should have hit him harder, she thought to herself. His biker buddies were mainly ignoring him, chatting to a couple of girls in mini-skirts and ripped fishnets, probably agreeing on a price. She looked away. LA was such a depressing place to live. Take that back, this whole realm was such a depressing place to live.
She turned back to Ezekiel, flicking her hair over her shoulder to give him a sight of her neck and her jugular, and then smiled at him again, though it took every ounce of acting ability she possessed. Some days she seriously thought she should have gone into acting. She deserved an Oscar for this performance. She opened her palm, showing Ezekiel two blue pills – Viagra - stolen from some random guy’s bathroom a few months ago.
‘You wanna try one?’ she said, leaning over.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his interest aroused.
‘Sweetest high you’ll ever experience,’ Ariel smiled.
He paused, finally starting to look suspicious.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked him, flashing him a smile and hoping to distract him.
‘Zeek,’ he said, his gaze dropping to her breasts again. ‘You?’
‘Ariel,’ she answered. It didn’t matter if she gave him her real name. He wasn’t going to be alive long enough to tell
anyone. ‘So, you wanna try one?’ she asked, giving him a low-lidded stare. ‘Why don’t we ditch this joint? I’ve got some Tequila back at mine. We can have ourselves a little party.’ Even as she said the words she was amazed that he was buying them. I mean really? He honestly thought anyone would want to party with him? But she supposed that was Suckers for you; big on lust, short on brain.
Ezekiel hopped off his stool. ‘Let’s go somewhere more private,’ he said. He was unsteady on his feet but certainly eager. He wove straight between the tables, heading towards the door.
Perfect. Ariel hopped off her stool and followed after him. The biker rubbing his head glared at her as she strolled on by.
Chapter 2
Once outside Ezekiel started pacing the parking lot like a caged rat. Ariel sauntered towards the filth-lined alley where she’d parked her van. ‘Round here,’ she called over her shoulder in what she hoped was a sultry manner, though truthfully she was starting to lose patience with the whole seduction routine. She just wanted to prick him and bag him. In her head she began picturing the moves that would have Zeek bound and sedated in the back of her van in the next thirty seconds.
As he trotted after her eager as a puppy, his feet kicking up the gravel, she weighed her moves. The easiest thing to do would be to get him inside the van before she injected him with sedative otherwise she’d have to carry him and she really didn’t want to have to touch him. The needle was in her pocket. She eased off the lid of the syringe and pulled it out of her jacket, but just as she was getting ready to whip around and plunge it into his neck she was grabbed from behind and thrown against the wall.
‘Ahhhh,’ she grunted as Zeek pressed his scrawny body flat against hers. Her cheek scraped brick and she let out a yelp that was more angry than afraid. He pulled her hands behind her back, gripping her wrists tight. She felt the syringe drop to the ground at her feet. Damn it. He was surprisingly strong for a Sucker.
